|
|
|
|
§ "Angela Merkel has ruled this country for twelve years. She
has imposed a debt burden of billions on the Germans to protect the southern
part of Europe from collapsing and to implement her idea of a European community. She has shaken the German energy industry to
save the world's climate. And she has opened the gates of the country to
hundreds of thousands of refugees because she considered it a humanitarian
obligation. She also changed the traditional notion of marriage, as marriage of
husband and wife, just like that...." — Tagesspiegel.
§ "We will reclaim our country and our people." —
Alexander Gauland, a former CDU official who is now co-chairman of the
Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
§ "The reality is that as of today, September 24, Ms. Merkel is
in effect a lame duck." — Handelsblatt.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has won a fourth
term in office, but the real winner of the German election on September 24 was
the Alternative for Germany, an upstart party that harnessed widespread anger
over Merkel's decision to allow into the country more than a million mostly
Muslim migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Preliminary election results show that Merkel's center-right CDU/CSU
alliance won around 33% of the vote, its worst electoral result in nearly 70
years. Merkel's main challenger, Martin Schulz and his center-left SPD, won
20.5%, the party's worst-ever showing.
The nationalist Alternative for Germany
(AfD) won around 13% to become the country's third-largest party, followed by
the classical liberal Free Democrats (FDP) with 10.7%, the far-left Linke party
with 9.2% and the environmentalist Greens with 8.9%.
"With only 33%, Merkel has not only
achieved the worst result of all the campaigns she has led, but also the
second-worst in the party's history," wrote Die Zeit.
|
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to the media in Berlin on September 25, the
day after her CDU/CSU party alliance won first place with 32.9% of the vote
-- its worst electoral result in nearly 70 years. (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty
Images)
|
Merkel now has two main options for
building a governing coalition: a so-called grand coalition between the CDU/CSU
and the SPD, or a three-way coalition comprising the CDU/CSU, the FDP and the
Greens. Building a stable coalition will be difficult, given that
all the parties have differing ideologies, platforms and priorities.
Merkel has governed twice in a grand
coalition with the SPD and once in coalition with the FDP. Schulz has insisted that the SDP will not agree to
another grand coalition because it would leave the AfD as Germany's main
opposition party, which would give it special rights and privileges in
parliament.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine
newspaper predicted that any
coalition would collapse before the end of the four-year legislative period
because Merkel will need to bring together several parties that could not be
more different:
"The CDU/CSU and the Greens are
worlds apart. Many positions of the libertarian FDP collide head-on with the
socialized ideas of the CDU/CSU.... The chances that such an alliance will last
until the end of the legislature is estimated to be far below 50%. There is an
obvious point of view: the CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens will start as a temporary
coalition whose protagonists become exhausted and give up after about two
years.... Surely by then the Chancellor will have concluded for herself that
enough is enough. The result would be new elections and the end of the Merkel
era and a new government — led by its successor."
Deutsche Welle concurred:
"Although these results mean the CDU
will remain Germany's largest party, it still represents a substantial loss for
the conservatives, who managed 41.5% in 2013. With a three-way coalition
looking to be the likely solution to avoid a minority government, Merkel is
about to begin a far less stable administration than in her past three
terms."
The Financial Times added:
"Ms. Merkel is clearly weakened. The
chancellor has over the past year been portrayed as the West's last
standard-bearer of liberal values in a world upended by populists such as Mr.
Trump. Sunday's election result has revealed just how much her domestic support
has dwindled, and how divisive her policies have been."
The election results show that more than
a million traditional CDU/CSU voters defected to the AfD in this vote. Detlef
Seif, a Christian Democrat MP, said disaffected voters
had abandoned the CDU because Merkel had moved the party too far to the left,
especially on immigration policy and gay marriage. "We must become more
focused on our core conservative values," he said.
CSU leader Horst Seehofer concurred: "There
is an open flank on our right and we have to close this flank with a clear
position and clear limits."
In Berlin, Tagesspiegel wrote:
"Angela Merkel has ruled this
country for twelve years. She has imposed a debt burden of billions on the
Germans to protect the southern part of Europe from collapsing and to implement
her idea of a European community. She has shaken the German energy industry
to save the world's climate. And she has opened the gates of the country to
hundreds of thousands of refugees because she considered it a humanitarian
obligation. She also changed the traditional notion of marriage, as marriage of
husband and wife, just like that....
"The world is celebrating the
chancellor for all of this: she has been called the climate chancellor,
Europe's savior, world stabilizer, in short: the most powerful woman in the
globe. At home, however, Merkel is facing a shambles after three periods of
government.
"What follows now is the beginning
of a farewell, even if no one can tell today how long it will last."
In a sobering analysis of the economic
and social problems facing Germany, Die Zeit wrote:
"No, not all is well in Germany.
Rents are rising, social divisions are becoming more acute, roads and schools
are often in bad, pathetic condition. With its slogan 'For a Germany in which
we live well and gladly,' the CDU/CSU won the election, but many voters lost.
The SPD was even punished with its worst result in the history of the Federal
Republic. The enormous losses for the grand coalition show: Too many problems
were ignored in the election campaign; there were hardly any concrete answers
to the pressing questions of our time. This is no longer acceptable. Many
voters want a government that transforms their country — not merely manages
it."
Merkel has remained defiant. During a
post-election press conference, she said: "I do not see
what we should be doing differently." She also insisted that there will
be no change in migration policy and no annual upper limit on asylum-seekers.
The AfD has countered that the status quo
is unacceptable: "Dear friends, now that we're obviously the third-biggest
party, the government has to buckle up," said Alexander Gauland,
a former CDU official who is now co-chairman of the AfD. "We will hunt
them. We will hunt Frau Merkel and we will reclaim our country and our
people."
Writing for Die Zeit, commenter
Ludwig Greven argued that Merkel
should resign to save Germany's mainstream parties from political extinction:
"With Sunday's election result,
Germany has followed in the footsteps of other European countries. In France,
the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Spain and the Scandinavian countries,
conservatives and Christian Democrats as well as socialists and Social
Democrats have been badly decimated, if not completely disappeared, from the
political scene. Especially in the neighboring Austria, where Christian
Democrats and Social Democrats have ruled much longer than in Germany, the two
great parties now hardly reach a parliamentary majority....
"If you push this thought game to
its logical conclusion, the only remaining and probably also most useful
solution is that Merkel abandons her claim to the chancellor's office. It
should be her last term anyway. If she resigned, she would deprive the AfD of
its decisive role as a protest party against her refugee policy and against her
as an eternal chancellor."
Germany's leading business and financial
newspaper, Handelsblatt, concluded:
"The reality is that as of today,
September 24, Ms. Merkel is in effect a lame duck. She herself once said that
she doesn't want to be carried out of office 'a half-dead wreck.' And yet she
has so far eliminated or sidelined any potential successor in her party. In her
fourth term, she will no longer have that luxury. Part of leadership is
planning for succession, and grooming a new generation of leaders. At present
the ranks of hopefuls within her party, and across the political spectrum, look
woefully unconvincing."
Soeren Kern is
a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
