Unpopular German Chancellor Scholz Under Pressure To Step Aside From Party Leadership and Let Defense Minister Pistorius Run in February Elections in His Place
Olaf Scholz, the most unpopular German Chancellor in recorded history, may be about to become an ex-leader.
Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner leading to his dysfunctional coalition to collapse.
He was then pressured to call for a confidence vote in December – that he will lose – and snap elections in February.
Now, inside his own party, the Chancellor is facing calls to let his popular defense minister run as lead candidate in the February vote.
The Telegraph reported:
“Senior members of Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) joined a chorus of voices calling for him to make way for Boris Pistorius – as a survey showed his public approval rating had sunk to new depths.”
The elections will arrive seven months earlier than originally scheduled after the collapse of the coalition.
Scholz wants to run for a second term as chancellor, but, with his pitiful standing in the polls, party members have called for him to step away.
Norbert Walter-Borjans, former leader of the SPD:
“’Scholz has saved our country from many threats in an extremely difficult time. But [opposition leader] Merz can only be stopped with a [candidate for] chancellor who has the strength to make the difference in a self-critical and approachable manner. That has been Scholz’s weak point so far.”
Pistorius is the most popular German politician, according to the Bild newspaper. Scholz fell from 19th to 20th place.
SPD leaders met yesterday (19) evening to discuss the matter while Scholz was on a plane returning from the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.
“Wiebke Esdar and Dirk Wiese, two SPD politicians, said: ‘Scholz’s current reputation is strongly linked to the [collapsed] coalition’. The pair added that they were seeing ‘a lot of support for Pistorius’ in their constituencies.”
Pistorius has already suggested to be open to running for chancellor, saying:
“’In politics, you should never rule anything out. The only thing I can definitely rule out is becoming pope’, he told journalists in Bavaria.”
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