Although the troubled chancellor will have a difficult time winning a second term, Olaf Scholz will be formally nominated on Monday to lead his centre-left Social Democrats into Germany’s February emergency elections.
Scholz is now the SPD’s candidate for chancellor after Boris Pistorius, his well-liked defence minister, declared himself out of the running last week.
Following Scholz’s coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) collapsing at the beginning of November, the elections are to take place seven months sooner than planned.
At their meeting on Monday, the SPD leadership will publicly declare that Scholz, 66, will lead the party’s election campaign and exhort members to unite behind him.
However, the oldest political party in Germany, which is sluggish at about 15% in polls, is taking a big chance.
The German magazine Der Spiegel claims that Scholz is the “face” of an administration that has failed and is characterised by ongoing disagreements.
He’s “probably the weakest, most unsuitable candidate for the chancellorship that the SPD has ever put forward” , stated the statement.
Opinion polls show that the main opposition conservatives, who include the CDU and CSU parties, are far ahead with 33 percent, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is making a comeback, is only at 18 percent.
