Sawt Falasteen - 'Worst crisis': German Greens leaders quit after election losses

The opposition conservatives seized on the news and called for early elections, days after Scholz's other junior coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats, flirted with the idea of bolting the government.

Infighting within the coalition led by Scholz's Social Democrats -- on budget issues, immigration, climate and the ailing economy -- has seen the government take a dive in the polls against the opposition CDU.

Although Scholz's SPD narrowy won a state election Sunday against the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), all three coalition parties have suffered recent heavy losses as the far right and far left have made strong gains.

The Greens' two co-leaders, Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang, announced their resignation after the party achieved only single-digit results in three elections this month in the formerly communist east.

Nouripour said the Greens were mired in their "worst crisis in a decade" after the dire results in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, while Lang said it was time for a "strategic reorientation".

The conservative CDU-CSU alliance called for the Greens' cabinet members -- Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Economy Minister Robert Habeck -- to also stand down.

"Our country cannot cope with another year" under the coalition government, CDU party chief Carsten Linnemann told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, adding that "there is no way around new elections".

- Greens dive in polls -

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said the departure of the Greens' co-leaders had "no consequences for the coalition".

The Greens emerged out of Germany's environmental, peace and anti-nuclear protest movements of the 1970s and participated in previous SPD-led governments between 1998 and 2005.

Riding high in opinion polls a few years ago, they now score just under 10 percent nationally, according to the latest INSA survey, with many young voters turning away.

The AfD and other foes have characterised the Greens as the party of city-dwelling killjoys who want to force Germans to ditch their beloved cars and sausages for cargo bicycles and vegetarian meals.

They also oppose the Greens, longtime proponents of minority rights and a multicultural society, as a brake on their push to limit irregular immigration and deport asylum-seekers whose claims are rejected.

"The Greens' problem is not in the party leadership... but in the government," Alexander Dobrindt of the CDU's Bavarian sister party CSU said.

He claimed that the Scholz government was "imploding" and "the dominos tumbling", a reference to deep frustration that has also rocked the Free Democrats (FDP) in recent days.

- Fury among Free Democrats -

The FDP did even worse than the Greens in the most recent state election, in Brandenburg which surrounds Berlin, where it scored just 0.8 percent.

The outcome was labelled a "catastrophe" within the small party, which advocates free market policies, tax cuts and less red tape.

The FDP's outspoken vice president Wolfgang Kubicki said the Scholz government must now either "show that it can draw the necessary conclusions from these elections or it will cease to exist".

His party will reconsider its position on staying in the coalition, he told the Funke Media Group. "We will not wait until Christmas. We cannot expect the country to endure this."

The party's Finance Minister Christian Lindner was more cryptic in his choice of words on whether the FDP would stay or go, which could spark new elections.

He warned that there was now a need for "courage" -- either to stick with a "controversial government" that can remain constructive or, if it fails, to "have the courage to spark a new dynamic".

P.Tamimi--SF-PST