Merkel rejects ailing coalition partners' bid for help

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks at election campaign rally in Potsdam Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Germans she had no votes to spare as she launched a final week of campaigning Monday, after a disastrous Bavarian election performance by her junior partners. Merkel told supporters of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the northern town of Duderstadt that she needed both the votes granted to them under Germany's electoral system in a general election Sunday.
"We have no votes to give away," she said in remarks broadcast on public television, after her junior partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), pleaded for a helping hand.
"We will fight for every vote."
Germany's 62 million voters can make two checks on their ballots in the national election -- one for a candidate and one for a party -- allowing the option of splitting their support.
While Merkel's conservative allies triumphed in the wealthy southern state Sunday, their coalition partners in Bavaria and at the national level, the FDP, crashed out of the regional parliament.
Analysts said the result made a third term for Merkel look increasing likely in next Sunday's general election.
But it raised the prospect of a nail-biter finish to see whether she can continue her centre-right government or will have to form a "grand coalition" with the rival Social Democrats.
This prompted the Free Democrats to launch a fevered bid to get voters who want to see Merkel continue with her second government to give them one of their two votes.
"We want Germany to continue being governed from the centre, for the centre," FDP leader Philipp Roesler told reporters.
With the FDP teetering on the five-percent hurdle to representation in parliament, analysts said the result could be extremely close.
"I'd say the odds are 50-50 for a grand coalition -- it's really the only possible option if the current government is not re-elected," Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, head of the independent polling institute Emnid, told AFP.
After what many have called a lacklustre election season, the top-selling daily Bild summed it up: "The final week of the federal campaign will be thrilling."
In Bavaria, the conservative ruling Christian Social Union clinched an absolute majority of seats in parliament with nearly 48 percent of the vote.
Its substantial victory means it can drop the FDP and govern alone.
"That is a huge vote of confidence," incumbent state premier Horst Seehofer told cheering supporters.
Merkel campaigned hard in the state's world-famous beer tents, pointing out that a big Bavarian win would lend momentum to her re-election bid at the helm of Europe's top economic power.
National polls give Merkel's conservatives an around 13-point lead over the main opposition Social Democrats (SPD), who scored just over 20 percent in Bavaria, historically a conservative state.
Merkel's chief election rival, Peer Steinbrueck of the SPD, took heart from the Free Democrats' catastrophe.
"This is the 13th state election in a row in which the centre-right love match failed to win," he told public television.
"There is a good chance that this will also happen on the federal level in a week's time."
The ecologist Greens turned in a dismal 8.6 percent, in keeping with a downward trend on the national level.
Commentators said the poor showing in Bavaria by the Free Democrats could in fact give them a boost in the September 22 general election.
"The FDP will now bank on a pity effect and votes from the conservatives," news weekly Die Zeit said on its website.
That prospect led many Christian Democrats to warn against ceding votes to the FDP.
"The FDP will be fine on its own -- stay cool, don't give away our votes," federal Environment Minister Peter Altmaier wrote on Twitter.
Merkel led a left-right grand coalition during her first four-year term. At the last election in 2009, a thumping 14.6-percent result for the FDP allowed Merkel to form a government with the conservatives' traditional allies.
Source: AFP