Dresden, Germany - Germany's opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) appointed Sigmar Gabriel, 50, a career politician, as its new leader Friday in a sweep-out of its leadership after a crushing setback at the polls. Gabriel succeeds party veteran Franz Muentefering, 69. In a straight yes-no vote at a party congress in the eastern German city of Dresden, he won 94-per-cent backing from the 500 delegates.
SPD support sagged to just 23 per cent in the September 27 German election, raising fears that the party was in its death throes.
The party's national committee ordained Gabriel and other younger figures to take over directly after the general-election disaster, and the congress was expected to rubber-stamp the choice.
Delegates proved less amenable in appointing the party's new general secretary. Andrea Nahles, 39, the official nominee, won just 70 per cent of ballots. She is to run the SPD national office in Berlin and the party bureaucracy.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the former foreign minister, was several weeks ago appointed head of the parliamentary party in Berlin, a post equivalent to leader of the opposition in other nations.
Delegates blamed the old party leadership for the general-election setback, and said the SPD should not have raised Germany's retirement age to 67, a move meant to save the pension system from bankruptcy.
Gabriel, who was environment minister till September in the SPD's grand coalition with the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), told delegates the party would reforge its policies, saying, "We have got to offer voters answers, within 12 months at the latest."
After weeks of meeting with SPD local committees round the nation, Gabriel criticized the party's course over the past decade, saying, "We listened to the ideologists of the market."
Gabriel, formerly a schoolteacher and a premier in his home state of Lower Saxony, is widely seen as the party's best orator and debater. Sometimes accused of opportunism, he has never allied himself with any one faction in the SPD.
He called for internal peace in the party, saying, "Most people outside the party couldn't care less about our feuds."
Amid repeated applause, he said, "Social Democrats want to improve lives, not adapt to the prevailing conditions."
He promised to harry the Merkel government, which was sworn in this month, telling delegates the new ministers were incompetent.
"They have got no idea of what binds us as a society," he said, claiming they were only catering to the better off.
In a farewell speech, Muentefering admitted he had made mistakes and accepted responsibility for the bad poll.
"The SPD has become smaller, but not the ideas of social democracy," Muentefering told the delegates. "We are able to fight, we are willing to fight and we'll be back."
The party led a coalition that ruled Germany from 1998 to 2005, and was in partnership with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives from 2005 to this year.
At the height of its influence, in 1972, the SPD won 46 per cent of German votes and was esteemed as one of Europe's great parties, with broad support among the German working class and middle-class intellectuals.
The SPD's grass-roots membership has shrunk to 510,000, down by 400,000 compared to 1990.
