Social Democrats elect Schulz as Merkel’s challenger

German Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel with Martin Schulz, candidate for chancellor of Germany’s social democratic SPD party, at the SPD Congress on Sunday. (AFP)

BERLIN: Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party unanimously elected Martin Schulz on Sunday as the party’s top candidate to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in the country’s upcoming general election.
Party leaders had unexpectedly nominated Schulz in January after long-time chairman Sigmar Gabriel stepped aside. Since then, the Social Democrats have enjoyed a surge in the polls that’s been attributed to the “Schulz effect.”
In a speech to delegates at a special convention in Berlin, Schulz evoked the party’s 154-year history of campaigning for workers’ rights and called for greater investment in education and health care.
He blamed the growing gap between average voters and the ultra-rich for souring politics and for boosting the popularity of nationalist and populist politicians.
The 61-year-old, who was until recently the president of the European Parliament, said his party would work to strengthen international cooperation, including with the US, but rejected what he called the “misogynistic, anti-democratic and racist” rhetoric of President Donald Trump.
Schulz, the only nominee for the post of party chairman, received 100 percent of the delegates’ votes, an unprecedented result in its post-war history.
An opinion poll published Sunday by the weekly Bild am Sonntag put support for the Social Democrats at 32 percent, one point behind Merkel’s Union bloc.
Analysts say Schulz benefits from being a relative newcomer to domestic politics compared to Merkel, who is running for a fourth term on Sept. 24.
The Social Democrats’ general secretary, Katarina Barley, said that the party had seen 13,000 new members join this year.
The first real test of the “Schulz effect” comes next Sunday, when voters in the small western state of Saarland go to the polls to elect a new government.
Schulz and Merkel’s parties are currently in a coalition government in the state, as they are at the national level.
Merkel, a frequent winner of Forbes magazine’s most-powerful woman ranking, said she was not troubled about the wind in the SPD’s sails, noting that there had always been potential in its “very meagre poll ratings.”
“Competition enlivens things,” she told Saarbruecker Zeitung.
Schulz has faced attacks by conservatives that he has adopted a “populist” tone but he dismisses the charges as elitism.
Party members are hopeful Schulz can help heal the divisions stemming from a program of labor market reforms known as Agenda 2010 and passed by the last SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, who lost to Merkel in 2005.
Meanwhile, Arne Schoenbohm, president of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), said that Germany had raised its alert level against cyberattacks to “heightened readiness” ahead of elections.
Government websites are already subjected to daily assault, he added.
“We are noticing attacks against government networks on a daily basis,” Schoenbohm told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
BSI is in close contact with election officials, political parties and German Federal States to discuss how to guard against cyberattacks and stands ready to react to potential attacks ahead of the elections, Schoenbohm said.
The newspaper did not give details of the number and types of alert levels but said the level has been raised since cyberattacks interfered in US presidential elections.
BSI is due to hold a press conference in Hanover on Monday at CeBIT, Germany’s largest annual technology conference.
The president of Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence service, Hans-Georg Maassen, warned in late February that industrialized countries were becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks.