Merkel Set To Become First Female Chancellor
Conservative leader Angela Merkel was set to become Germany’s first female chancellor under a power-sharing agreement that would end Gerhard Schroeder’s seven years in office, party officials said Monday.
Schroeder’s Social Democrats extracted a high price for the chancellor’s backing down from his demands to continue in office: his party would get eight seats in the Cabinet, compared with six for Merkel’s group, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The agreement would end a three-week standoff that began when voters ousted Schroeder’s ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens on Sept. 18 but failed to give a majority to Merkel’s preferred center-right coalition.
Merkel forced Schroeder to drop his demand to be chancellor, saying that as head of the party with the largest number of seats, the job belonged to her. She would be the first woman to lead Germany and the first person from the formerly communist east to hold the job.
Financial markets reacted positively to the news that Merkel was set to become Chancellor. Some german thoughts on the matter …
Source: MSNBC.
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