BERLIN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Germany's green party (Gruene) parliamentary faction leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt has urged Horst Seehofer (CSU) to resign from his post as the federal interior minister with immediate effect on Monday.
"Every day which Horst Seehofer stays on as interior minister is a day too many," Goering-Eckardt told the newspaper Tagesspiegel.
The German green party has recently witnessed a surge in voter support in regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse and is currently ranked in second place behind Merkel's conservative union (CDU/CSU) and ahead of the German Social Democrats (SPD) in most federal opinion polls.
According to the German press agency (DPA), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU is preparing to elect a new leader at the start of the next year. Seehofer has made clear that he would not seek to retain his post as German interior minister.
Speaking to Tagesspiegel, Goering-Eckardt, warned against leaving the department in a resulting state of limbo and attacked Seehofer's policies as interior minister as constituting a "security risk" for German society. "He should resign as interior minister immediately as well, rather than remaining in the post for several months", the green party leader argued.
The call for Seehofer to quit the interior ministry follows unconfirmed media reports about the embattled CSU leader stepping down from all of his political offices.
The traditionally outspoken interior minister has yet to comment on reports of his departure from German politics but announced to make a personal statement about his future in the course of this week.
