Anti-nuclear rally enlivens German General Election campaign

A convey of 350 farm tractors rumbled through Berlin on Saturday,5th September to launch a mass anti-nuclear rally, designed to influence Germany's general election in three weeks' time.

About 50,000 opponents of nuclear power took part in the protest, which kicked off with an 8-km (5-mile)-long convey of tractors that passed in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices and through the government quarter to the city's historic Brandenburg Gate.

Determined to make nuclear power a focus of the election campaign, the protesters criticised Merkel and her conservative party, which wants to scrap a 2001 law to shut down Germany's 17 remaining nuclear power plants by the mid-2020s.

The future of nuclear power is one of the few key issues that divide Merkel's Christian Democrats from the Social Democrats (SPD) of her challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The parties have shared power for the past four years in an awkward 'grand coalition' that both want to end.

But so far nuclear power has only been a fringe issue in the run-up to the September 27 election, in which Merkel's conservatives and their preferred partners, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), have been pushing to extend the life of the plants.

A wide majority of Germans oppose nuclear power, according to opinion polls. But Merkel and the FDP still hold a slim lead over other possible coalition alliances ahead of the election. The SPD and Greens oppose any change to the nuclear exit law.

Crowds of well-wishers waved at the long convoy of tractors, some of which pulled wagons filled with demonstrators or fake barrels of radioactive waste.

Source : REUTERS