Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

‘Lack of leadership’: Merkel under fire after far-right gains in regional German election

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces renewed pressure from within her Christian Democrats after the centre-right party was beaten by the populist, far-right AfD in the Thuringia state election on Sunday.

Published: 29 October 2019 14:03 CET
'Lack of leadership': Merkel under fire after far-right gains in regional German election
The pressure is on Angela Merkel after the Thuringia vote. Photo: DPA

Her conservative critics charge that Merkel has dragged the CDU too far to the left on immigration, climate and other issues, allowing the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on the extreme right.

A long-time rival who hopes to succeed Merkel, Friedrich Merz, suggested the veteran leader dubbed “Mutti” (mummy) is already a lame duck and should bow out long before she plans to leave politics in 2021.

In his most direct attack yet, 63-year-old Merz said that “for years the chancellor's inactivity and lack of leadership have covered this country like a blanket of fog.

“I simply cannot imagine that this kind of governance will last another two years in Germany,” said Merz, an executive of the German arm of US investment firm BlackRock.

'Barely heard or seen'

Merkel, in power for almost 14 years, has faced heightened pressure ever since 2015 when she decided to keep open German borders to a mass influx of refugees and migrants.

The move earned her much praise but also sparked an angry backlash that fuelled the rise of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam AfD, now the biggest opposition party.

READ ALSO: What does the far-right AfD's success in Thuringia mean for Germany?

Björn Höcke, chairman of the AfD in Thuringia celebrating after the vote. Photo: DPA

In recent months it has topped 20 percent in three state polls in the ex-communist east — most recently Sunday when it narrowly beat Merkel's CDU in Thuringia to second spot behind the far-left Die Linke.

It was the CDU's worst ever result there and seemed to echo the demise of Germany's other mainstream party, the Social Democrats (SPD), which scored just nine percent.

News website Spiegel Online asserted that the state election showed that “the state of the CDU is at least as desolate” as that of the SPD.

READ ALSO: AfD surges to second place in Thuringia state election

The big difference for now was that the CDU remains the party of the chancellor, it said, adding however that “this could easily be missed given that Angela Merkel is barely heard or seen these days”.

'Something must change'

It was after a similar state poll setback last year that Merkel dramatically handed over the CDU leadership to her preferred successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely known by her initials AKK.

Friedrich Merz and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer earlier this year. Photo: DPA

AKK in a later vote beat Merz for the party chair's position and more recently also took on the post of defence minister, but in recent months her political star has dimmed.

Doubts about AKK have grown after several blunders and gaffes, including a spat with a YouTube personality, a joke about intersex people and a surprise proposal for a peacekeeping mission to Syria that sparked open discord within
the cabinet.

Tilman Kuban, head of the CDU's youth wing, which leans towards Merz, this week openly asked whether AKK is the right candidate to lead the party.

Another critic who took aim at both Merkel and her crown princess was parliamentary group co-leader Axel Fischer, who called the latest defeat “thelogical consequence of national CDU policies that seems to lack any substance”.

An outsider, the Free Democrats' co-leader Wolfgang Kubicki, put it more bluntly, declaring that Kramp-Karrenbauer simply “lacks the stature” to lead the CDU or run for chancellor.

Things are likely to come to a head toward the end of the year, when the SPD will decide whether to stay in Merkel's coalition or leave, which could spark new elections.

Before then, the CDU will face their own fireworks, at a party congress in late November.

Merz has so far held his fire against AKK, preferring to attack the government as a whole.

“The image of the government is simply abysmal,” he thundered this week, demanding that “something must change”.

By Yacine Le Forestier

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLITICS

Scholz says attacks on deputies ‘threaten’ democracy

Leading politicians on Saturday condemned an attack on a European deputy with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party, after investigators said a political motive was suspected.

Published: 5 May 2024 08:34 CEST
Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

SHOW COMMENTS