Posted on 09/02/2003 10:14:22 AM PDT by knighthawk
BAD TOELZ, Germany: Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber, defeated by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in last September's German election by 6,000 votes, is taking revenge.
His conservatives are set to humiliate Schroeder's Social Democrats in a Bavarian state election on September 21 and have put the chancellor's economic reforms -- seen as key to reviving Europe's largest economy -- on hold while they do it.
It will be a year to the day since the more telegenic Schroeder came from behind to win re-election, profiting from his strong handling of a flood disaster and his popular opposition to the Iraq war.
But the war is over, Germany has been bone-dry all summer and Schroeder has failed to avert recession or cut unemployment, stuck above four million. National support for his SPD hit record lows this year and is now stuck at 30 percent.
Surveys among the over nine million voters in Stoiber's prosperous home state suggest his Christian Social Union (CSU) may win over 60 per cent, dealing the SPD their third regional defeat this year following losses in Lower Saxony and Hesse.
The impact will be to strengthen Stoiber's influence on the Bavaria-based CSU's bigger sister party, the Christian Democrat CDU, and reinforce calls for the staid 61-year-old to challenge Schroeder again in the 2006 general election.
Threat to Germany
To try to avoid becoming a lame duck in the next three years and to keep discipline in his unruly coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, Schroeder said on Monday he planned to stand again in 2006 alongside Greens Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
"That's a threat to Germany," Stoiber called to around 700 supporters in a beer tent near the town of Bad Toelz, south of Munich, at a campaign rally on Monday night, flanked by an Oompah band and sipping beer.
"It's like a soccer manager who leads his team to the bottom of the league and then says, 'Don't worry, I'm so great I'll lead you for another season!' Every fan would think he's mad!" said Stoiber to thunderous applause before donning a Bavarian felt hat and conducting the band.
With its jobless rate of 6.6 per cent against the 10.4 national average, and above average growth over the last decade, Bavaria retains an image of success that has eluded the rest of the country now dubbed the sick man of Europe.
Stoiber, premier of Bavaria for the last decade, has been credited with some of that success by using privatisation proceeds to attract businesses to the state.
The SPD is heading for its worst ever result of around 20 per cent in Bavaria amid anger over Schroeder's failure to boost the economy and fear of the cuts in welfare and tax subsidies.
Yet another defeat will make it all the more urgent for Schroeder to push his package of welfare cuts, labour market, health and pension reforms dubbed "Agenda 2010" that are seen as his only chance to revive the economy and his own fortunes.
But the reforms are on hold.
Talks in Berlin between the SPD and the conservatives, who can block most of the measures as they control the upper house of parliament, have ceased until after the Bavarian vote.
"Stoiber doesn't want to scare off voters by pinning himself down on what reforms he is ready to back," said Robert Sturm, political analyst at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
After the election, a strengthened Stoiber is expected to challenge CDU leader Angela Merkel by demanding a leading role in renegotiating the reforms.
Whether he will go on to challenge her and other CDU regional barons for the conservative nomination in 2006 is likely to remain unanswered for some time.
"Somehow Edmund Stoiber has become too big for Bavaria," news magazine Der Spiegel wrote this week.
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