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Schroeder gives a thumbs up after his speech at an election campaign in front of the word Germany, in his hometown Hanover
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BERLIN,
September 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder on Friday, September 20, wrapped up his campaign for the
weekend's national election with a slight edge over conservative rival
Edmund Stoiber, in a race that was transformed into a cliffhanger by a
floods disaster and fears of war in Iraq.
Schroeder
will take to the stage in Dortmund, a traditional power base for his
Social Democrats (SPD), flanked by Nobel prize winning author Guenter
Grass and Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson for a final rally
before Sunday's vote, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
Persson's
re-election a week ago stemmed the tide of right-wing poll victories
across Europe in the past year.
Schroeder
is hoping to build on that trend by keeping his center-left government
with the ecologist Greens at the reins of Europe's biggest economic
power.
"There
will be pleasant surprises on Sunday," a confident Schroeder told
reporters following a rally late Thursday, September 19, in his
hometown of Hanover.
"The
most positive thing will be that we will be in front," he
predicted.
After
months of dismal support ratings, Schroeder's SPD has surged to a
wafer-thin lead over Stoiber's conservative Christian Union alliance
(CDU/CSU) in four major opinion polls and is trailing by a fraction of
a percentage point in a fifth.
Meanwhile,
the Greens are running neck-and-neck with the second potential
kingmaker, the liberal Free Democrats.
The
race, in other words, is still wide open.
Just
last month the SPD was looking at almost certain defeat, which would
have made Schroeder the first chancellor in post-war history to be
voted out after just one term, AFP said.
But
a crippling floods crisis that swept through eastern Germany,
destroying homes and livelihoods at a cost of some 15 billion euros
(dollars), gave Schroeder the chance to show off his personal brand of
empathy and hands-on management.
It
boosted his already strong personal popularity and robbed Stoiber of
the momentum he had won by hounding Schroeder on his broken promise to
turn around chronically high unemployment or promote economic growth.
The jobless rate is close to 10 percent and economic growth is
forecast to reach an anemic 0.5 percent this year.
Next
came Schroeder's firm opposition to a war with Iraq, pronounced at the
opening of his campaign in Hanover last month.
Schroeder
said he would not offer German troops for any strike against Baghdad,
even with a new U.N. mandate authorizing military action against
12-year-sanction-hit Iraq.
His
uncompromising position struck a chord in a nation still traumatized
by its militaristic past and the SPD continued to rise in the polls,
despite Stoiber's later assurances that he would also refuse to send
German soldiers into any Gulf war.
Stoiber,
meanwhile, saw his campaign sputter. He was considered to have lost a
televised debate to the media-savvy Schroeder and lost control of the
political agenda as the focus shifted away from unemployment.
Yet
even with Schroeder's triumphant return to the race, Germans say they
are unsatisfied with the choice they have before them.
They
are unconvinced either of the candidates will solve the problems that
most concern them, including joblessness and security, or keep their
promise to keep Germany out of a war.
A
poll by the Emnid institute for news channel NTV found that 54 percent
of registered voters were generally unhappy with the work of the
government while only 43 percent said they were satisfied, AFP said.
The
figures were comparable for the conservative opposition, with 57
percent unsatisfied and 37 percent pleased with Stoiber's team.
