Germany's former Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier appealed to the emotions of his centre-left opposition party on Saturday with an attack on Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition and a vow to win back power in next year's election. Steinmeier, one of three Social Democrat (SPD) leaders jostling to lead the party into the 2013 election, delivered an uncharacteristically rousing speech to 700 SPD officials at a conference, in what sounded like an audition for the top job.
"We're going to fight to win, not for second place," Steinmeier said, dismissing suspicions the SPD would be content as junior partner in another grand coalition with Merkel's conservatives. "We want to lead in a coalition with the Greens, a coalition that will point Germany towards the future." The SPD will pick a candidate in January to run against Merkel in the election due in September 2013. Steinmeier leads the pack, ahead of SPD Chairman Sigmar Gabriel and ex-Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck.
Often criticised for a colourless and cerebral style, Steinmeier was full of fight during his hour-long address, drawing enthusiastic applause for bashing Merkel and her squabbling coalition which he said was squandering a solid foundation laid by the last SPD-led government. "The country is in agony with this coalition," he told the SPD's "Zukunftskongress", or conference on the future.
"Wherever you look they're fighting each other. This coalition has been together for three years but they still haven't formed a working government. They're blowing the headstart for Germany we created for them." Having ousted Merkel's CDU in three of Germany's 16 state elections in 2011 and 2012, the SPD has said it wants to raise taxes on the rich if it wins back power in 2013.
"They're talking the country into a coma with the same tired line: 'We're in good shape in Germany'," Steinmeier said. "We're glad we're in good shape. But we know we're living on borrowed time and we know that time is slipping away. This government is squandering the head start the last SPD-led government gave it." Steinmeier was chief of staff in the SPD-Greens government and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's right-hand man in the SPD-Greens coalition that led Germany until 2005. Its "Agenda 2010" economic reform programme is widely credited with setting a solid basis for Germany's performance even though the painful measures hurt the SPD at the polls.
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