BERLIN: The embattled leader of Bavaria's dominant conservatives — part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition — announced Thursday that he will step down, heading off a prolonged crisis that could have complicated the federal government's workings.
Edmund Stoiber announced that he would quit as governor of his prosperous southern state on Sept. 30 and also give up the leadership of his Christian Social Union. That will end the career of a prominent figure on the national stage who, in 2002, narrowly failed to unseat Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder as chancellor.
Stoiber, Bavaria's governor for nearly 14 years, had been fighting for political survival amid slipping poll ratings and a scandal over his office's attempts to gather information on a critic. He had sought to defuse growing resistance in the party to his bid to run for yet another term as governor in state elections next year.
"I made this decision because it is important to me to act at the right time for Bavaria and for the CSU," Stoiber, 65, said in a brief statement to reporters in Munich.
A party conference in September will decide both on the party's new leader and its candidate for Bavaria's new governor, Stoiber said.
The CSU is the Bavaria-only sister party in Bavaria to Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, and the two parties campaign together in national elections.
While the two leaders have had a sometimes uneasy relationship, Merkel has refrained from commenting on Stoiber's recent difficulties.
In 2002, Stoiber was chosen over Merkel as the conservatives' candidate for chancellor. Schroeder came from behind in polls to win the election.
Stoiber bounced back, winning more than 60 percent of the vote for the CSU in state elections the following year. But his credibility suffered lasting damage when, in 2005, he abruptly abandoned plans to become Merkel's economy minister and opted to remain in Bavaria.
Stoiber recently has irritated many in Berlin by demanding changes to the Merkel government's flagship health insurance reform, which had been agreed after painstaking negotiations that included Stoiber.
Recent polls have shown a majority of Bavarians opposing another Stoiber run for governor and also suggested that the CSU might struggle to maintain its decades-old absolute majority in the state legislature.
At national level, a poll released Wednesday indicated support for the CDU and CSU slipping to 33 percent from 35 percent a week earlier. Their partners in Merkel's "grand coalition," the center-left Social Democrats, gained two points to 28 percent.
The poll of 2,501 people, conducted Jan. 8-12 by the Forsa agency for Stern magazine and RTL television, gave a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Social Democratic chairman Kurt Beck said earlier this week that, while the turmoil in the CSU did not endanger the coalition, "its ability to act is affected if one doesn't know whom one is dealing with."
The dispute over Stoiber has been complicated by the lack of a single obvious successor.
Earlier Thursday, Bavaria's hawkish state interior minister, Guenther Beckstein, said there was "no decision" on the succession.
That statement followed reports that Beckstein would become the new Bavarian governor, while state economy minister Erwin Huber would become the new CSU leader.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/18/europe/EU-POL-Germany-Conservative-Leader.php
The bad thing: Günther Beckstein will likely follow him
