Angela Merkel’s humiliation in her political home state provides further evidence to her opponents that Germany’s first female chancellor has had her day.
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Germany’s far-right party made gains in Sunday’s local elections-after a campaign filled with racism and xenophobia against refugees-scoring ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party and securing seats on nine of 16 regional parliaments. As a result, “there isn’t all that much they can do”. That could put it in a position to overtake Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats for second place.
She insists too that she has no regrets about her open-door migration policy, which saw more than a million migrants taken in by Germany previous year.
“It’s definitely a slap in the face for her and her policies”, said Jaeger. The state is now ruled by a coalition of the CDU and the SDP. With her focus on the political centre, “what she will do is keep calm and carry on”. While the influx of people seeking asylum has dropped markedly from a year ago, two Islamist terror attacks by asylum seekers in July further unsettled the public about the security implications of the migrant tide.
Merkel has yet to say whether she will seek a fourth term next year, as is widely expected.
Erlier this week, Merkel urged voters to reject AfD, which she said in an interview had “no solution for problems and which are built mainly around a protest – often with hate”.
An article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung predicts an “autumn of discontent” for the chancellor, while Die Welt thinks many of her long-standing critics will now “break cover” and “let rip”. Yet for Chancellor Merkel and the CDU, there isn’t good news at all.
The big influx of refugees and migrants has dragged her approval ratings to a five-year low of 45 percent, but Merkel was unapologetic and said, faced with the same situation today, she would act no differently.
“The key is that we must bring about more security, not just domestic security or protection from crime and terrorism, but also social security”, he said, after the results.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats took 19.8 percent in the Baltic coast state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday, while Alternative for Germany, or AfD, had 21.4 percent, according to ZDF results based on partially counted ballots.
CDU candidate and Mecklenburg-Pomerania Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier took a harder stance on immigration to differentiate himself from Merkel.
Merkel wants a quota system for the 28-member European Union to accept would-be immigrants. Police in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern recorded seven incidents of attempted arson at refugee shelters in 2015.
Meanwhile, the joint CDU and CSU parliamentary spokesperson on domestic affairs, Stephan Mayer, told the “Huffington Post” that the election results amounted to “a catastrophe” that came as a reaction to Merkel’s refugee policy.
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