00:00It was all smiles at the Social Democrat Party conference in Berlin.
00:07The current German leader, Olaf Scholz, was confirmed as the SPD candidate for chancellor.
00:13Only five delegates out of nearly 600 failed to back him.
00:23The chancellor said Germany was at a crossroads and that he would implement
00:27tax and investment plans to help all sections of German society.
00:33He also said that the far right posed a threat to the institutions of German government.
00:44Others want to demolish our democracy with their chainsaws. We are fighting to preserve
00:48and renew the successful Made in Germany brand for the ordinary people in our country. So we fight.
00:57A rousing reception for the chancellor here at party conference. But if Olaf Scholz and the SPD
01:08really do have ambitions of returning to governance after this election,
01:12they're going to have to overcome one heck of a gap in the polls.
01:17They are currently third in the polls on 16 percent. That's 14 points behind the
01:21conservatives on 30 percent and six points behind the second-placed AFD on 22 percent.
01:30Health Minister Karl Lauterbach believes there's still time to turn things around.
01:34I do think that the election campaign is just starting and the issues that we basically put
01:43forward are important issues for the general population. Payable rent, long-term care,
01:51health care, retirement benefits, security, internal security, external security.
01:57So I think in the next couple of weeks the message will
02:01come forward and the election is much more open than many people believe.
02:10While things were fairly festive in Berlin, they were more fraught in Saxony where the far right
02:16AFD were going through the same process of approving a candidate for chancellor.
02:21Delegates were delayed by protesters en route to the venue. But once things got up and running,
02:27Alice Weidel, who was publicly backed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, was confirmed as the AFD
02:33candidate. She left no ambiguity over what her migration policy would be if elected as chancellor.
02:40Close the borders completely and turn back anyone entering the country illegally and without papers.
02:52And a very clear message to the whole world. The German borders are closed.
02:57They're friends. They're closed.
03:02In Hamburg, the Christian Democratic Union rubber-stamped Friedrich Merz as its candidate
03:07for the conservative bloc. He lashed out at Chancellor Scholz's recent rebuke of US
03:13President-elect Donald Trump's coveting of neighboring territories.
03:22I honestly cannot imagine that the American president is in any way impressed by a four
03:26minute press conference or a four minute press statement by the German chancellor
03:30on Greenland, the Gulf of Mexico or the Panama Canal. Moralizing from Germany has never made
03:36an impression in America and has usually had the opposite effect. Merz believes he can provide the
03:42right balance between Europe and the USA. The conservatives are running on a manifesto of
03:47keeping Germany's strict rules on government borrowing and lowering income and sales taxes.
03:55With the other main parties, the Greens, the Free Democrats and BSW also approving their
04:00candidates, we are set for a six-week final dash to the Bundestag and the chancellor's office.
04:06Peter Oliver, CGTN, Berlin.
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