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Sep 29, 2009, 14:03 GMT

SPD secretary-general to step down after election debacle

Berlin - The secretary-general of Germany's embattled Social Democratic Party (SPD), Hubertus Heil, announced Tuesday that he will not stand for re-election at the party's next congress in November. Heil made the announcement two days after the SPD was swept from power in a general election which saw the centre-left party achieve its worst result since World war II. On Monday, SPD chairman Franz Muentefering indicated he would also step down to allow the party to regenerate itself under a new leadership. The SPD saw its share of the vote slump 11.2 per cent to 23 per cent on Sunday, allowing Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats to garner enough support for a new conservative coalition with the business-oriented Free Democrats. The SPD had served in a grand coalition with the CDU for the past four years after neither party could muster enough votes to govern on its own, following the last election in 2005. Analysis of voting trends suggested that many SPD voters stayed away from the polling booths in dissatisfaction at the party's shift away from traditional SPD values.

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