German Chancellor Angela Merkel was facing fresh pressure today after a regional election drubbing described as a “debacle” over her liberal refugee policy.
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State elections in three German states including Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt and Baden-Wuerttemberg were held on Sunday.
In this March 11, 2016 picture, German chancellor Angela Merkel, right, attends an election rally with Rhineland-Palatinate top candidate of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, Julia Kloeckner in Trier, Germany.
That made clear a sizeable minority is uneasy about Merkel’s policies.
“In which case, we would have to live with AfD like France does with the National Front and Switzerland with the SVP (Swiss People’s Party), and be confronted daily with xenophobia in political discourse”, he said.
But many viewed the overall outcome as a sign of support for her approach.
“These elections have become significant … as they’ll function as a litmus test for the government’s contested policy” German political scientist Jens Walther told AFP.
Dr Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been losing support to the AfD, which has profited from the growing unease.
The anti-immigrant AfD party had campaigned against what it called Mrs Merkel’s “catastrophic” decision to accept a million migrants and refugees.
But AfD has arrived on the political scene at a fortuitous moment.
“All who voted for us stand behind this policy”.
“…Not only migration policy, but also family policy, our energy policies and even the care of our economy in terms of how to treat middle-sized companies, has not been the focus of politics for quite a long time – and AfD has offered a number of ideas to change these policies”. “The answer to the population after such an election result can not be that everything continues as it was”, he added.
“We fought like lions for your land”, he said, dismissing Merkel as “the worst chancellor in the history of Germany”.
She went on to state that AfD “needs to be here”, because Germany “needs a new alternative – and I think that’s us”.
Estimates suggest that more than a million migrants and refugees entered Germany in 2015 and conservative voters have been tempted to lean towards the AfD’s more restrictive approach.
“No question about it, none of the parties in the federal parliament has any reason to be happy about these election results”, said Michael Grosse-Broemer, the parliamentary chief whip of Mrs Merkel’s CDU.
AfD candidate Joerg Meuthen talks to guests.
Andreas Scheuer, general secretary of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party to Merkel’s CDU, said Germany needed to come up with quick and effective solutions to limit the influx of migrants.
Merkels party kept its status as strongest party in Saxony-Anhalt.
The patience Merkel is asking for seems to be gone among many of her allies, who called for the chancellor to back down for the good of her party.
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There was a considerable increase in turn-out on previous state elections which commentators put down to voters wanting to punish Mrs Merkel.
