Schroeder, challenger Merkel vow to win German election
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-09-13 11:09

Like the head-to-head TV duel between Schroeder and Merkel eight days earlier that had given the chancellor a boost in the polls, the debate of six party leaders was dominated by the economy and tax policy.

Schroeder rounded on the proposals of Merkel's shadow finance minister Paul Kirchhof to introduce a flat tax rate of 25 percent.

"It is completely unfair that a bus driver will pay as much as a millionaire," Schroeder said.

Merkel hit back that the flat tax proposal was not in the Christian Democrats' election manifesto and, in an escalation of the tone between the two leaders, accused Schroeder of "polemic unworthy of a chancellor".

She said Kirchhof would be finance minister "if the voters allowed it".

Schroeder defended his unpopular economic reform programme and said that his government had had to deal with an exceptional set of external factors, including record oil prices, which he partly blamed for unemployment rising to around five million during his seven years in charge.

Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder gestures during his speech at an election campaign rally in Muenster, western Germany, September 12, 2005. [Reuters]

Merkel countered that Germany's European neighbours had been faced with the same problems but they had succeeded in creating jobs and economic growth.

Schroeder was also forced to deny that he was concealing a list of hitherto unannounced cuts which media reports say form part of a secret 30-billion-euro package of savings he will unleash if re-elected.

He accused the opposition of dirty tricks, suggesting "finance ministry officials with Christian Democrat sympathies" had cooked up the list.

Earlier on Monday, the Christian Democrats had announced a shift in their election strategy in a bid to persuade voters of the danger that the Social Democrats and Greens would be prepared to join forces with a party comprising former communists in a bid to cling on to power -- a coalition that Schroeder has ruled out.

A poll released on Monday showed that a coalition of the Christian Democrats and their preferred partners, the Free Democrats, would score a combined 48 percent, just short of the 48.5 percent necessary for a governing majority.

Yet an alliance of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the recently formed Left Party, made up of ex-communists and disgruntled Social Democrats, would amass a winning 49 percent, according to the Forsa poll for Stern magazine and the RTL broadcaster.

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