Merkel Ally to Seek Re-Election Despite Conviction

A German state premier and ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday he would stand for re-election this year, although a court convicted him this week of involuntary manslaughter for his part in a fatal ski crash. Dieter Althaus, the 50-year-old conservative premier of Thuringia, faces re-election in August, less than a month before Germany's federal election.

Earlier this week, an Austrian court found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter and fined him 33,000 euros for his role in a collision on ski slopes in Austria after which a Slovakian woman died.

The popular Christian Democrat (CDU) politician is one of Merkel's closest allies in the former communist eastern states and there are no obvious high-profile alternative candidates.

"I am ready to take responsibility as premier for the beautiful and successful state of Thuringia for another five years," Althaus, who was severely injured in the skiing accident, said in a statement posted on his party's website.

"I will stand," he added, saying he had talked extensively to family, friends and doctors about the decision. These are the first comments on his future since the deadly high-speed smash on New Year's Day in which he fractured his skull.

Opinion polls show that Merkel's CDU risks losing Thuringia to a leftist coalition and there are also signs that far-right parties are gaining ground in the state.

Althaus and the 41-year-old Slovakian woman who died had been skiing down separate slopes but reenactments suggest the German left his piste briefly, skiing several metres uphill into the downward path of the woman.

There are no indications yet whether voters in the state will punish Althaus for his recent conviction.