BERLIN: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved parliament on Friday and confirmed the expected February date for an early general election after the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s government last month.

Scholz’s coalition was brought down by internal fights about how to revive Europe’s largest economy but a deadly car-ramming attack at a Christmas market last week has renewed the country’s heated debates over security and immigration.

Confirming the Feb 23 date for the election, Steinmeier emphasised the need for “political stability” and appealed for the campaign to be “conducted with respect and decency”.

A Saudi doctor, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, 50, was arrested at the scene of the attack on the Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg which left five people dead and more than 200 injured.

Interior Minister Nancy Fraser has said Abdulmohsen held “Islamophobic” views but his exact motive remains unclear. In the wake of the attack, Scholz appealed to Germans to “link arms” and to not allow “hatred to determine our coexistence”.

The conservative CDU/CSU is leading in the polls on around 32 per cent under its leader Friedrich Merz and even before last week’s attack it had been promising a harder line on immigration as well as a rightward shift on social and economic policy.

On Friday Merz wrote about the attack in his newsletter, pointing to the suspect’s previous criminal record and asking: “Why don’t we get rid of such people before they do something this awful?” If necessary, the law should be changed to make such deportations possible, he said.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2024