Word: merkel
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That view changed dramatically last week when Edmund Stoiber, the premier of Bavaria and the CSU's chairman, announced he was a candidate to oppose Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in national elections this September. Within five days, Stoiber's main opponent for the job, CDU chairwoman Angela Merkel, announced she was dropping out of the race, leaving it to Stoiber to carry the conservative banner...
Perhaps more importantly for Stoiber, 60, poll results have consistently shown him leading Merkel as the favored candidate to oppose Schröder. With support ebbing away, Merkel said she met with Stoiber Friday morning and agreed to back him for the joint nomination, ending the bickering between the two parties. Later in the day she met with the CDU board, and it unanimously backed Stoiber to lead the election campaign...
...Although Merkel, 47, had served as a Minister of the Environment under former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and had the support of younger and female members of the CDU, she was never able to shake the image of being inexperienced in government. She took over as CDU chairwoman only two years ago, when the party became mired in a slush-fund scandal. (Last week Stoiber became entangled in a campaign-funding controversy about the way his party raised money by selling subscriptions to the CSU newspaper. A prosecutor in Munich quickly said the party had not broken...
Another plus for Stoiber is his tough law-and-order stance. Ronald Schill, who won nearly a fifth of the vote in a Hamburg mayoral race recently for his new Law-and-Order Party, had threatened to field candidates nationwide if Merkel was the conservative choice, but not if Stoiber ran. Stoiber also takes a hard line on immigration, while Schröder has proposed a sweeping reform of immigration laws to allow more qualified foreign workers into the country. Voters have consistently shown themselves to be against increased immigration. If Stoiber should win, it could change the political climate...
...made much of the fact that for every visa issued to a foreign computer specialist, at least two jobs are created for German workers in support positions such as customer service. And over the past year, opposition to the green card scheme seems to have become muted, with Angela Merkel, the CDU leader, announcing a nuanced change to her party's outright opposition to immigration to allow a small number of temporary visas to help industry fill its job vacancies. But this is indeed a minor shift: when the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder appealed last month...