World

Kohl Party Names New Leader

February 16, 2000 / 9:11 AM EST / AP

Germany's Christian Democrats picked a fresh team of leaders in parliament Tuesday to help pull them out of their slush fund scandal, naming a crisp-suited 44-year-old attorney as main opposition floor leader.

After weeks on the defensive, the conservatives took a crucial step toward renewal by lifting a member of the post-Helmut Kohl generation into a top post for the first time.

Lawmakers from the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union, chose Friedrich Merz, a former judge and economics expert, for the job of faction leader in the federal legislature by a vote of 217-7.

"Today we start lining up a new team," said CSU chairman Edmund Stoiber. "I'm convinced that he will be not only a new beginning, but also a very convincing leader."

"It's a ray of hope," he said.

Merz, a two-term lawmaker, has shot to prominence as a younger, sharp-tongued debater since Kohl was voted out as chancellor in 1998. He has not spared even Kohl, whose illegal fund raising while he was in power set off the scandal last fall.

Merz has called Kohl's conduct "miserable" and blamed him for causing "the deepest crisis in our party's 50-year history."

Lawmakers also chose six deputy floor leaders, mostly new faces in their 40s. The most prominent holdover was former Defense Minister Volker Ruehe, also seen as a contender for party chairman.

The Christian Democrats cleared the way for renewal two weeks ago when Wolfgang Schaeuble, a longtime Kohl protege, said he would quit as party chief and faction leader after an internal rebellion against his handling of the scandal.

Kohl admitted in December that he accepted up to $1 million in undeclared -- therefore illegal -- cash donations in the 1990s. He has refused to name the sources, prompting parliament to investigate whether decisions during his 16 years in power were bought.

The scandal has grown to include a network of secret accounts, still larger sums of campaign money of unexplained origin and accusations of money laundering.

Merz has built a reputation attacking the center-left government's finance and social security policies. In 1989, he was the youngest German to be elected to the European Parliament at age 33.

Weeks of wrangling still lie ahead over who should chair the party itself.

Secretary-General Angela Merkel, a former East German, has been considered the frontrunner in her bid to become the Christian Democrats' first female head.

But Ruehe, known as the "Rambo" of German politics for his combative style, has made plain he won't give up despite losing the governor's race Sunday in Schleswig-Holstein state.

The party denied a report Tuesday in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper that the candidates had agreed that Ruehe would become party chairman while Merkel remained secretary-general.