The Hindu : Front Page : German polls: Schroeder, Merkel make claims

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 19, 2005

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Front Page

German polls: Schroeder, Merkel make claims

By Vaiju Naravane

BERLIN: In a day of total surprises in Germany's most hotly contested elections in recent times, both the challenger Conservative Angela Merkel and outgoing Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder claimed they could head the country's next government and vowed to enter into talks with a view to forming a new coalition.

Although Ms. Merkel's Christian Democrats emerged as the largest party, with 35.3 per cent of the votes, it fell far short of the 41 per cent predicted by the polls.

Position weakened

And though she still has a chance of becoming Germany's first woman Chancellor, Ms. Merkel's position has been weakened since she will not be able to govern alone with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) as she had hoped.

The FDP did surprisingly well with 10.4 per cent of the vote, but the combined score of the two conservative parties falls far short of the 48.5 required to govern.

Traffic light coalition

Chancellor Schroeder's SPD party did better than expected with 33.9 per cent of the vote. The FDP's strong showing opens up the possibility of what the Germans call a "traffic light coalition" — red for the Social Democrats, yellow for the Free Democrats and green for the pro-environment Green Party.

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