“CLEAR THE WAY”
In Berlin, the debate was anything but calm.
The conservative opposition seems to have rejected Scholz’s offer of talks out of hand.
“First the vote of confidence, then we can talk about issues,” conservative MP Alexander Dobrindt told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
The popular Bild daily called for Scholz to “clear the way” for a new government.
“You, Mr Scholz, have tried and failed,” Bild editor Marion Horn wrote in a blistering commentary. “Let us voters reassign the mandate of power … as quickly as possible.”
Some 65 per cent of German voters agreed, while just 33 percent supported Scholz’s more relaxed timeline, according to a survey for public broadcaster ARD.
The coalition crisis, centred on discord over economic and fiscal policy, came to a head when Scholz sacked his rebellious finance minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats.
It has reduced the government to Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens.
Scholz also drew fire from unexpected quarters this week when US tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk in a short German-language message on X labelled him a “Narr”, or a fool.
Asked about the comment, a tight-lipped Scholz simply called it “not very friendly” and said that internet companies are “not organs of state, so I did not pay it any attention”.
