Merkel seeks to boost party before vote, clashes with deputy

BERLIN (AP) — Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel painted a rosy picture of her government's record on Tuesday and assailed the possibility of a future left-wing administration, seeking to boost her struggling party's candidate as she addressed what is expected to be the German parliament's last session before the Sept. 26 election.

Merkel also clashed openly with her deputy, who is a rival party's candidate to succeed her and is currently leading polls, over a comment in which he described people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 as “guinea pigs.”

It was an unusually partisan speech by Merkel, who has largely stayed out of the campaign on the grounds that outgoing leaders should hold back, and appeared to reflect mounting concern over her center-right Union bloc's prospects under would-be successor Armin Laschet.

Recent polls have shown the Union slipping into second place, while the center-left Social Democrats have moved into the lead thanks to the relative popularity of Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is also Germany's finance minister. They put the environmentalist Greens, whose co-leader Annalena Baerbock is making the party's first run for chancellor, in third place.

They suggest a wide variety of governing coalitions could emerge. As the Union's poll ratings have declined, its leaders have issued increasingly frequent warnings that Scholz and the Greens would bring the hard-left opposition Left Party into government. Scholz has refused to rule that out, but it's clearly not his favored option.

Merkel told lawmakers that the election is “a trend-setting election for our country in the most difficult of times, and it is not irrelevant who governs this country.”

Voters can choose between a government in which the Social Democrats and Greens “accept the...