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ANGELA MERKEL

Germany looks beyond Merkel as party prepares to elect successor

A knife-edge vote on Friday will determine Angela Merkel's successor as head of her party after 18 years at the helm, with the German chancellor's own political fate and legacy on the line.

Published: 5 December 2018 09:01 CET
Germany looks beyond Merkel as party prepares to elect successor
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Jens Spahn and Friedrich Merz during the regional conferences. Who will be the next Merkel? Photo: DPA

Merkel, the European Union's most powerful leader, stunned observers in October with the announcement following a state election setback that she would not stand again as chairwoman of her centre-right Christian Democrats
(CDU).

After years of turmoil within the party and the electorate over her disputed decision to keep the border open to more than one million asylum seekers, Merkel has said she will leave politics when her term ends in 2021.

Whether she can hold on to power until then will depend in large part on who the CDU elects to replace her at a party conference in Hamburg, with a Merkel loyalist and a longtime nemesis running neck-and-neck.

SEE ALSO: End of an era: What you need to know about Merkel's planned departure

“Sooner or later, whoever becomes the leader of Germany's biggest party will probably become chancellor,” political scientist Eckhard Jesse of the University of Chemnitz told AFP.

Widely seen as Merkel's favourite is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, 56. Known as AKK for short, she is the CDU's centrist General Secretary and former premier of tiny Saarland state.

While polls indicate that she is also the favoured choice among German voters and the CDU's rank-and-file, there are indications she has failed to electrify the 1,001 delegates who will cast ballots in the race against her charismatic main rival, Friedrich Merz, dubbed the 'anti-Merkel'.

SEE ALSO: Survey: Kramp Karrenbauer top choice to replace Merkel as leader

Merz, 63, a hard-charging corporate lawyer, lost a power struggle to Merkel in 2002 and insiders say he has never forgiven her.

He is also viewed as embodying the party's desire for change in both style and substance after 13 years with Merkel in the chancellery, despite her enduring popularity.

The wild card in the race is Jens Spahn, who at 38-years-old is the youngest of the frontrunners. He is the Health Minister in Merkel's cabinet who has long railed against her refugee policy.

Analysts say that a win for either Merz or Spahn would likely bring a swift end to Merkel's chancellorship, possibly triggering new elections next year. 


Angela Merkel at a digital summit in Bavaria on Tuesday. Photo: DPA

'Slap in the face'

How the delegates will vote is anyone's guess, with most keeping their cards close to their chests.

Nearly all hold political office or party posts. One-third are women. After more than a decade in the private sector, Merz says his conservative credentials and business savvy make him best placed to win back disaffected
voters.

But he touched a nerve when he said the CDU, in his absence, had accepted the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during the refugee crisis “shrugging its shoulders”.

“I get icy chills down my spine when I see people running around in this country doing the Hitler salute,” he told one regional conference.

Kramp-Karrenbauer, who has criticised some aspects of Merkel's border policy, shot back that Merz's accusation was a “slap in the face” for the party's foot soldiers.

“Pretending you could just say or decide something and then the fight against the AfD would be won is naive,” she told the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

SEE ALSO: 'I can win back AfD voters': CDU leadership candidate hoping for Merkel's job

'Like matricide'

The CDU remains Germany's biggest party. But the 33 percent it scored in the September 2017 general election has sunk to around 28 percent in opinion polls as the party suffered losses in a string of regional votes.

While still seen as Europe's go-to leader on crises from Brexit to Ukraine, Merkel has watched her standing diminish at the top of a loveless “grand coalition” with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

The SPD is faring even worse in the polls, as internal divisions over its former chancellor Gerhard Schröder's sweeping labour market reforms continue to fester.

CDU stalwarts expect a Merkel nostalgia-fest in Hamburg as the faithful bid a gradual goodbye to the woman who won them four national elections.

SEE ALSO: How the race to replace Merkel is breathing life into the CDU

But newsweekly Der Spiegel noted that the leadership struggle needed to produce some sort of consensus on Merkel's legacy if the party wants to avoid the fate of the SPD.

“Without a critical reckoning with her era, the CDU will be stuck in an interminable therapy session,” it said.

“The CDU has to allow it, even if it seems to many like matricide.”

By Deborah Cole

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POLITICS

Sleep, seaside, potato soup: What will Merkel do next?

 After 16 years in charge of Europe's biggest economy, the first thing Angela Merkel wants to do when she retires from politics is take "a little nap". But what about after that?

Published: 5 December 2021 17:31 CET
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes and smiles at a 2018 press conference in Berlin.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes at a 2018 press conference in Berlin. Aside from plans to take "a little nap" after retiring this week, she hasn't given much away about what she might do next. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP

The veteran chancellor has been tight-lipped about what she will do after handing over the reins to her successor Olaf Scholz on December 8th.

During her four terms in office, 67-year-old Merkel was often described as the most powerful woman in the world — but she hinted recently that she will not miss being in charge.

“I will understand very quickly that all this is now someone else’s responsibility. And I think I’m going to like that situation a lot,” she said during a trip to Washington this summer.

Famous for her stamina and her ability to remain fresh after all-night meetings, Merkel once said she can store sleep like a camel stores water.

But when asked about her retirement in Washington, she replied: “Maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will start to close because I’m tired, so I’ll take a little nap, and then we’ll see where I show up.”

READ ALSO: ‘Eternal’ chancellor: Germany’s Merkel to hand over power
READ ALSO: The Merkel-Raute: How a hand gesture became a brand

‘See what happens’
First elected as an MP in 1990, just after German reunification, Merkel recently suggested she had never had time to stop and reflect on what else she might like to do.

“I have never had a normal working day and… I have naturally stopped asking myself what interests me most outside politics,” she told an audience during a joint interview with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

“As I have reached the age of 67, I don’t have an infinite amount of time left. This means that I want to think carefully about what I want to do in the next phase of my life,” she said.

“Do I want to write, do I want to speak, do I want to go hiking, do I want to stay at home, do I want to see the world? I’ve decided to just do nothing to begin with and see what happens.”

Merkel’s predecessors have not stayed quiet for long. Helmut Schmidt, who left the chancellery in 1982, became co-editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a popular commentator on political life.

Helmut Kohl set up his own consultancy firm and Gerhard Schroeder became a lobbyist, taking a controversial position as chairman of the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.

German writer David Safier has imagined a more eccentric future for Merkel, penning a crime novel called Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark  that sees her tempted out of retirement to investigate a mysterious murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel forms her trademark hand gesture, the so-called “Merkel-Raute” (known in English as the Merkel rhombus, Merkel diamond or Triangle of Power). (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
 

Planting vegetables
Merkel may wish to spend more time with her husband Joachim Sauer in Hohenwalde, near Templin in the former East Germany where she grew up, and where she has a holiday home that she retreats to when she’s weary.

Among the leisure activities she may undertake there is vegetable, and especially, potato planting, something that she once told Bunte magazine in an interview in 2013 that she enjoyed doing.

She is also known to be a fan of the volcanic island of D’Ischia, especially the remote seaside village of Sant’Angelo.

Merkel was captured on a smartphone video this week browsing the footwear in a Berlin sportswear store, leading to speculation that she may be planning something active.

Or the former scientist could embark on a speaking tour of the countless universities from Seoul to Tel Aviv that have awarded her honorary doctorates.

Merkel is set to receive a monthly pension of around 15,000 euros ($16,900) in her retirement, according to a calculation by the German Taxpayers’ Association.

But she has never been one for lavish spending, living in a fourth-floor apartment in Berlin and often doing her own grocery shopping.

In 2014, she even took Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to her favourite supermarket in Berlin after a bilateral meeting.

So perhaps she will simply spend some quiet nights in sipping her beloved white wine and whipping up the dish she once declared as her favourite, a “really good potato soup”.

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