BERLIN (Reuters) – The chairman of Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU), Armin Laschet, urged senior party members on Monday to end a week-long stand-off and back him as chancellor candidate of the conservative bloc in a national election, participants said.
With Chancellor Angela Merkel, also from the CDU, stepping down after the Sept. 26 election, pressure is mounting on the conservatives to agree on a candidate as its ratings wallow near a one-year low, hurt by a chaotic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Laschet and Markus Soeder, who leads the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU, have been at loggerheads over who is better placed to become chancellor candidate for their conservative alliance, dubbed ‘the Union’, and lead it to election victory.
Speaking to members of the CDU’s federal executive committee, Laschet said he was ready and willing to take on the role, according to participants of the virtual meeting.
“Today is the day to decide,” Laschet was quoted as saying. “I encourage you to have an open debate.”
Laschet said his recent talks with conservative rival Soeder had been good and that the CSU chairman had made clear earlier on Monday that he would accept the decision of the CDU federal executive committee, the sources said.
“This is a very important signal,” Laschet was quoted as saying.
The disarray in the conservative camp was in contrast to the opposition Greens who on Monday, with no internal wrangling, named their co-leader Annalena Baerbock as their first candidate for chancellor in the party’s 40-year history.
The conservatives retain a narrow lead in polls over the Greens, but the leadership rift threatens to harm their efforts to prolong their 16-year-old hold on power without Merkel, who has won them four consecutive victories.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke and Michael Nienaber; Editing by Gareth Jones)
