HANOVER: Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger for power in next year's German election will seek to re-energise his campaign Sunday after a cash-for-speeches affair that threatened to torpedo his chances.
Delegates from the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) will officially hand Peer Steinbrueck, 65, a former finance minister, the unenviable task of toppling the popular Merkel, often called the world's most powerful woman.
Three months ago, party leaders nominated Steinbrueck as their candidate to challenge the conservative Merkel in elections expected on September 22 but his campaign has since misfired amid wave after wave of bad press.
He has struggled to get his challenge off the ground since revelations that he pocketed some 1.25 million euros ($1.63 million) in fees for making speeches at private functions and media described his speech Sunday as a defining moment.
"Steinbrueck needs a speech that people will later say began it all. The upturn in fortunes. The win in (state elections in) Lower Saxony. The triumph at the federal election," said Spiegel newsweekly in its online edition.
But the opinion polls show the scale of the task facing Steinbrueck, finance minister under Merkel between 2005 and 2009.
A poll released by ARD public television ahead of the party conference in the northern city of Hanover showed the SPD still languishing some nine points behind Merkel's conservative CDU and CSU sister party from Bavaria.
Germans do not directly elect their chancellor but if they could, 49 percent would plump for Merkel and only 39 percent would vote for Steinbrueck in the election, the poll showed, although the gap appears to be narrowing slightly.
A similar survey released on Thursday put the difference between them in the so-called "chancellor question" at a whopping 24 points, with Steinbrueck suffering especially from the speeches scandal.
"The SPD is coming from an extraordinarily difficult starting point," said Nils Diederich, political scientist at the Free University in Berlin.
Nevertheless, Steinbrueck, a gruff and punchy character from Germany's north, is expected to come out fighting and give a fiery speech after his nomination, reportedly set to last as long as 90 minutes.
While Merkel hails her government as "the most successful since reunification" in 1990, Steinbrueck has branded her cabinet the weakest in modern German history.
He told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily on the eve of his speech that he would aim to put "justice, freedom and solidarity" front-and-centre of his campaign.
"The financial crisis has cost us more than just money," he stressed.
Merkel has hesitated to really go after Steinbrueck, perhaps with the thought that they could yet be forced together again in a grand coalition.
But that has not stopped others in her party from licking their lips at the prospect of tackling a candidate who so far has struggled to get on the front foot.
"First of all the SPD had a bit of bad luck, and then along came Steinbrueck," quipped Volker Kauder, a close Merkel ally, to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2012
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