MUNICH, Germany, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- A former candidate for German chancellor and his possible successor fight for their political lives as they are entangled in snooping and sex scandals.
Edmund Stoiber, an ally to current Chancellor Angela Merkel, is facing calls for his early retirement. The 65-year-old has been one of Germany's most prominent politicians for the past decades, regularly sweeping the elections in his home state Bavaria, one of the richest and most prosperous regions in the country.
But when his top aide snooped into the private life of female rival Gabriele Pauli, a regional politician who has been one of Stoiber's fiercest critics inside the Christian Social Union party, things slowly got out of hand.
Pauli got wind of the snooping and informed the press; Stoiber fired his top aide but it seems that things have spiraled out of control. More and more party colleagues say Stoiber has become unbearable for the party.
Horst Seehofer, agriculture minister in Merkel's Cabinet in Berlin, is expected to replace Stoiber as party chairman, and Bavarian Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein would replace Stoiber as state premier, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said over the weekend.
But Seehofer on Tuesday was himself thrust into an embarrassing scandal when the Bild newspaper revealed that the top politician has had an extramarital affair and a child born out of wedlock.
Observers say the rumors are deliberately spread to cause even greater chaos inside the Christian Social Union, the sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrat Union. Merkel said she was unhappy about the rifts inside the party, but added she was optimistic the crisis could be overcome.
