Olaf Scholz: Germany’s steady hand losing grip on power

Olaf Scholz said he planned to ask for a vote of confidence by January 15, clearing the way for early elections by the end of March — six months earlier than scheduled – Copyright AFP Odd ANDERSEN

Femke COLBORNE

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been dubbed the “Scholzomat” for a dry personal style bordering on the robotic, but also hailed as a safe pair of hands leading a country that values stability.

But on Wednesday night, as political turmoil ended his fractious three-way coalition, order collapsed and power has started to slip from his grasp as likely new elections loom.

Scholz, after firing his finance minister in an angry row, said he planned to ask for a vote of confidence by January 15 so that MPs can decide whether to hold early elections by the end of March — six months earlier than scheduled.

“When an emergency situation arises, action is mandatory,” the centre-left leader said in his trademark calm delivery at a late night press conference.

Scholz, 66, the quietly ambitious grey man of German politics, will hope to prove wrong his growing band of critics, and poor poll ratings, to pull off another surprise victory, as he did in 2021 when he replaced Angela Merkel.

At the time Scholz benefited from disastrous own-goals by his political rivals that propelled him to the helm of a coalition government with the Greens and Free Democrats.

It was a stunning victory for the former mayor of Hamburg whom Der Spiegel magazine once labelled “the embodiment of boredom in politics”. 

Scholz, who had until then served as Merkel’s finance minister in a left-right grand coalition, moved into her seat in a show of continuity that many voters found reassuring.

Known for restraint and reliability more than for soaring oratory, his oft-repeated promise to voters has simply been that “if you ask for leadership, you’ll get it”.

– ‘Know-it-all’ –

After an optimistic start, his government quickly weathered multiple major crises, from the Covid pandemic to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and a surge in energy prices that pummelled Europe’s biggest economy.

Scholz made history with a speech that declared Russia’s aggression an “epochal shift” and announced a massive rise in defence spending in a break with his party’s pacifist tradition.

But in recent months, ever angrier squabbling between his governing allies, much of it centred on the flagging economy and how to carve up a tightening budget, has steadily diminished his authority.

In a recent poll for public broadcaster ZDF, only 28 percent of respondents said they considered Scholz a suitable candidate to be Germany’s next chancellor.

Even within his SPD, some have suggested he follow the example of US President Joe Biden and make way for a more promising candidate, with popular Defence Minister Boris Pistorius seen as a strong contender.

Born in the western city of Osnabrueck and raised near Hamburg, Scholz had lofty ambitions even as a child, according to his father. “He told me when he was 12 that he wanted to be chancellor,” Gerhard Scholz told the Bild daily.

Describing his son as a “know-it-all”, the elder Scholz said his son was such a good student that “in Latin, the teacher could learn from him.”

Scholz joined the SPD’s youth movement in 1975 as a firebrand left-wing activist and was pictured at peace protests sporting wool sweaters and an unruly crop of long hair.

He became vice-president of the movement in the 1980s but failed to become its leader because he was considered too left-wing, though he later tempered his views to align with a more centrist course.

– ‘Scholzomat’ –

After training as a lawyer and founding his own Hamburg legal firm specialised in labour issues in 1985 — now minus the hair — Scholz was elected to the national parliament in 1998.

It was during his 2002-2004 stint as the SPD’s general secretary that he earned the moniker “Scholzomat” for his dry yet tireless defence of the unpopular labour reforms of then-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Though not thrilled with the nickname, Scholz later admitted in an interview with Bunte magazine that “it was certainly not an entirely false description”. 

“I was always asked the same questions and I always gave the same answers,” he said, adding that away from the cameras he “laughs more often than people think”.

Scholz announced in July that he would be running for a second term as chancellor, noting that the SPD had won in 2021 “from a difficult starting position”.

Scholz lives in Potsdam outside Berlin with his wife Britta Ernst, also an SPD politician. They have no children.