German Social Democratic Party candidate Peer Steinbrueck speaks during an interview at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg yesterday.

DPA/Berlin


Peer Steinbrueck, the German politician trying to unseat Chancellor Angela Merkel in this month’s general elections, yesterday absolved his political opponents of a bid to “blackmail” him into withdrawing from the race.
Steinbrueck has passed to police a letter that accused him of employing a Filipina house cleaner 14 years ago without paying tax. He has told a newspaper the woman was in fact “borrowed” for six months from the household of his mother-in-law, now deceased.
“This obviously doesn’t have anything to do with the parties competing in the election campaign,” he told the newspaper Saarbruecker Zeitung.
The allegation has brought a whiff of scandal to a general election campaign which has been polite to the point of dullness. Steinbrueck, standard-bearer of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), remains far behind Merkel in the polls.
He told the newspaper he suspected the anonymous letter had been sent by a neighbour in Bonn, where he lives. Reports said the letter demanded he resign his candidacy before the September 22 federal election.
Asked if anything similar had happened to him before, he replied, “Not in the form of blackmail.”
SPD party leader Sigmar Gabriel, who last year stepped aside and nominated Steinbrueck for chancellor, had earlier called the letter a dirty trick, telling the newspaper Bild am Sonntag, “This attempted blackmail marks the absolute nadir in this election campaign.”
Employment of cleaners and nannies on a cash basis without paying income tax has brought political careers to a sudden end in multiple nations. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has not called Steinbrueck’s honesty into doubt since the story spread Saturday.
The newspaper Bild quoted Steinbrueck’s wife Gertrud, a retired teacher, saying that her mother, also a Bonn resident, made a present of six months’ home help in 1999 by sending her own cleaner round once weekly. The daughter paid, but the mother reimbursed the payments.
After six months, the Steinbruecks offered to employ the cleaner themselves with all taxes deducted, but she declined the job. Steinbrueck later confirmed to other media that his wife’s account to Bild was accurate.