RPT: PREVIEW - German Ruling Conservatives Hold Leadership Contest On Saturday To Pick Merkel's Successor

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2021) German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats will meet by video on Saturday to elect their next leader, putting that person in the pole position to succeed her after the parliamentary polls in fall.

Three men are running in the leadership contest to replace Merkel's unlucky heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who resigned as chairwoman of the conservative CDU early in 2020 after a series of fiascos.

The voting by 1,001 CDU delegates will be the most important event in the German political life of the past 15 years. The three contenders seem to be alike in that they are all white, middle-aged men from the country's Catholic heartland, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, but the devil is in the detail.

TRADITION, CONTINUITY OR CHANGE

The polls give the lead to Friedrich Merz, a former CDU heavyweight turned successful businessman, who has emphasized his economic prowess in a bid to win over those concerned by the devastating impact of coronavirus shutdowns.

Merz has also styled himself as more of a traditional candidate, courting controversy with his comments about homosexuality and immigration in an apparent effort to reclaim votes lost to the far-right AfD party.

The 65-year-old returned to the political scene after Merkel stepped down from CDU leadership in 2018 and announced that she was serving out her last term. He lost to Merkel's handpicked candidate and has been widely seen as her antipode.

Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, has been trailing Merz in the latest opinion polls after initially appearing as Merkel's preferred candidate. He lost some support after advocating for lockdown easing in spring.

Laschet, 59, bills himself as the moderate continuity candidate who will preserve Merkel's heritage. He sided with the chancellor during the 2015 migrant crisis and has said that he plans to stand by her other policies. He is also notably the only candidate with a senior government position.

Norbert Roettgen, the head of the parliament's foreign affairs committee, has been running neck-and-neck with Laschet in opinion polls. A former environment minister, he was fired by Merkel after CDU's embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Socialists in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state.

The 55-year-old telegenic lawyer and foreign affairs expert has been courting younger voters and women via his social media campaign and by posing as the candidate of change. He has positioned himself as Merkel's critic by stating repeatedly that he did not belong in her camp.

Having a foreign affairs background, Roettgen has also been more pronounced about his desired foreign policy. He has admitted to being a transatlanticist who is seeking a joined US-EU approach to China and a harder line on Russia that may include pulling the plug on the Nord Stream gas link.

POOL OF CHANCELLOR CONTENDERS WIDENS

The common perception in German has been that whoever wins CDU leadership gets the country's top job, but the pandemic has been a major game changer.

The outbreak has raised the profile of two other men � Health Minister Jens Spahn and Bavarian premier Markus Soeder. Both have been in denial about their plans to run for chancellor, but German media do not buy it.

Spahn, in particular, has been sounding out the base and the party's heavyweights about his chances of winning the chancellor's office despite being Laschet's running mate, according to the Bild daily. It said Laschet only learned about this act of backstabbing in late December.

Markus Soeder, the chairman of CDU's Bavarian sister party CSU, has been leading the polls as the preferred candidate to succeed Merkel despite him saying that his "place is in Bavaria." The CDU/CSU coalition will announce its pick in spring, Soeder said last week.

The winner will face off with Socialists' likely candidate Olaf Scholz, the finance minister in the Federal coalition government, as well as with a contender from the Greens party, which plans to run the race for the job.

Whoever takes over from Merkel will be held up to a very high standard. More than 70 percent of those sampled by the Emnid pollster in early January said they were content or extremely content with Merkel's job performance.

The chancellor, affectionately called Mommy by Germans, will retire after staying in office for 16 consecutive years, punctuated by a global financial crisis, a migrant influx and a pandemic. Her departure will be the end of an era, marked by her fight for a close-knit European Union based around centrism and predictability. That may change come fall.