Scholz gets nod to run again for chancellor

Germany's Social Democratic Party, or SPD, on Monday formally announced Chancellor Olaf Scholz as its top candidate for the upcoming snap election scheduled for Feb 23.

The decision to nominate Scholz followed a two-week period of internal debate within the SPD, with party members deciding between supporting the current chancellor's bid for a second term or backing alternative candidate Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

Pistorius, who polls show is currently Germany's most popular politician, announced last week that he would not seek the chancellorship and instead endorsed Scholz.

While this cleared the path for Scholz's nomination as the SPD's lead candidate, the incumbent chancellor continues to struggle with low public approval ratings, reported Germany's Deutsche Welle news network.

Pistorius was among 33 senior SPD members who voted for Scholz's nomination as the party's candidate for chancellor on Monday, ahead of what is expected to be a routine confirmation at the party conference on Jan 11.

The German government's "traffic light" coalition collapsed earlier this month, after Scholz dismissed the Free Democrats leader Christian Lindner from his position as finance minister. The FDP, a pro-business party, had been the smallest member of the three-party alliance that included the Greens.

According to Der Spiegel news magazine, Scholz is the "face" of a failed government marked by perpetual disputes and "probably the weakest, most unsuitable candidate for the chancellorship that the SPD has ever put forward".

While the SPD, Germany's oldest political party, languishes at around 15 percent in opinion polls, the main opposition conservatives, the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union parties, or CDU and CSU, lead with 33 percent, and the resurgent far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, stands at 18 percent, reported AFP.

In the wake of the coalition's collapse, the Greens have put forward Economics Minister and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck as its candidate for chancellor, backed by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

Meanwhile, Friedrich Merz leads the poll-topping CDU into the election, and the AfD is represented by Alice Weidel, who secured her party's nomination in September.

It is the first time in its history that the AfD has named an official chancellor candidate, marking a significant milestone for the party that Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has classified as "extreme-right".

SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch urged party unity on Sunday, calling for members to "stand united behind Scholz "while conceding that recent internal party debates had been damaging to its position.

Conservative leaders have welcomed Scholz's candidacy, seeing it as advantageous to their campaign, with CDU lawmaker Mathias Middelberg stating that Pistorius would have been "more unpleasant" for the conservative alliance to face.

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