GERMANY:Senior German conservative Edmund Stoiber announced his departure as Bavarian state premier yesterday, beginning a period of uncertainty for the conservative camp of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
After 14 years heading the Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party of Dr Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), Mr Stoiber conceded to weeks of damaging party intrigue and said he would stand down at the end of September.
"It was important to me to act in a timely manner in the interests of Bavaria and the CSU," said Mr Stoiber, a teetotaling technocrat who always cut an odd figure in beer-soaked Bavaria.
His departure begins a succession battle with at least four hopefuls and huge consequences for Dr Merkel's grand coalition in Berlin.
For her, any new CSU leader will be a welcome change from Mr Stoiber, who in recent months had become become an increasingly ill-tempered critic of her government's work.
Mr Stoiber blew his chance at the big time in 2002 when he fell 8,000 votes short of ousting Gerhard Schröder as chancellor. His decline began after the 2005 general election when he made loud demands for an important position in Dr Merkel's cabinet, and then decided to stay in Munich.
The beginning of the end came last month when a mid-ranking party official complained that a Stoiber aide had been digging for dirt about her private life.
Mr Stoiber declined to meet the woman in question and what began as a minor scandal snowballed into a public relations disaster. Mr Stoiber's deputies turned on him when polls showed the CSU had dropped to 45 per cent in polls, endangering its decades-old absolute majority in Bavaria.
The new CSU leader will have to work quickly to stabilise the party ahead of next year's state election: a poor result would change the German political landscape and the power relationship in Berlin.
Despite his undignified exit, Mr Stoiber will be remembered for turning Bavaria into an economic powerhouse in Germany, with economic growth twice the national average and unemployment half.
Mr Stoiber promoted traditional conservative social values while attracting investment in high-tech industries, a dual policy he christened "laptops and lederhosen".