BERLIN, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- The party chief of Angela Merkel's ruling coalition partner Free Democrat (FDP) Philipp Roesler will remain the FDP chairman despite mounting pressure on him to step down, party sources said on Monday.
Roesler, who is also Merkel's vice chancellor and the economy minister, had offered to quit earlier on Monday after a defeat for Merkel's conservative bloc in a key state election.
But the FDP decided that Roesler is to keep the post.
It also decided that senior parliamentary leader Rainer Bruederle would become the FDP's chief candidate at the upcoming German federal elections in September, a party spokesperson said.
Roesler rose to power by succeeding ex-chairman Guido Westerwelle as the FDP's party chief in 2011. He has been thrown into a vortex of disputes with the party gaining lower than the 5-percent requirement for the parliamentary representative right in the national polls.
However, the party rebounded with a strong performance in the Lower Saxony polls on Sunday by garnering 9.9 percent of the total votes - their best result in Lower Saxony in post-war history.
Some analysts said this was a result of the deliberate apportioning of the ruling Christian Democrats' (CDU) own ballots to prevent FDP from tumbling out of the legislature in Lower Saxony.
Exit polls showed 101,000 voters who voted conservative in 2008 chose to support the FDP in the election.
It handed a narrow but bitter defeat to Merkel's ruling coalition eight months before the country's general election.
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