German PM Bets Gang Up On Conservative In TV Debate

Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock, the two center-left candidates in Germany's September 26 election, said in the final major election debate on Sunday that it was time for the governing conservatives to go into opposition after 16 years in power, Friederike Heine reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

Photo Insert: Chancellor hopefuls Olaf Scholz, Annalena Baerbock, and Armin Laschet going at it during a televised debate.

Scholz dodged the question of whether he would rule out another grand coalition between the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and his Social Democrats (SPD), but said that "most voters want the CDU to go into opposition."

The CDU has led four successive coalition governments with Angela Merkel at the helm since 2005. Merkel is not running for a fifth term, which has given Germany's remaining parties a realistic chance of shaking up the country's political landscape.

"The fact the CDU is best placed to go into opposition was underlined once again by this (debate)," said Baerbock, adding that her Green party's platform had a lot of overlap with that of the SPD.

Though the SPD is due to capture around 25 percent of the vote according to recent polls compared to the CDU's 22 percent, the center-left party and the environmentalist Greens do not have a large enough vote share to govern without the support of a third political party.

The most likely party to complete a three-way coalition is the hard-left Die Linke. CDU candidate Armin Laschet used Sunday's debate to repeatedly warn against what such a swing to the left would mean for Germany. Scholz did best in Sunday's debate, according to a poll.

When asked who won the TV challenge, 42 percent of the viewers voted for Scholz. Laschet was second with 27 percent, while Baerbock was third with 25 percent of the votes. The poll results were presented by broadcaster Sat.1, who alongside ProSieben and Kabeleins, broadcast the three-way debate live.

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