German Chancellor Angela Merkel took partial responsibility for her party’s worst-ever performance in a Berlin state election, acknowledging Monday that her government’s policies at the national level were a factor.
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The city of 3.5 million has experienced a population boom during that time, putting pressure on housing, schools and its transport infrastructure.
Though not necessarily on her open-arms refugee policy.
Disillusionment is high over the capital’s notoriously inefficient bureaucracy and issues such as years of delays in opening its new airport.
The big winners were the traditional also-rans of German politics, die Linke, or the left, the remnant of the old East German communist party, and the environmentalist Green Party. It put the AfD on 14 percent, the environmentalist Greens on 15 percent and the leftist Die Linke at 14.5 percent. A woman applies make-up to the top candidates of the Christian Democrats, Frank Henkel, left, and Social Democrats, Mayor Michael Mueller, before a TV appearance after the state elections in the German capital Berlin Sunda.
The Christian Democrats’ vote percentage ended up nearly 6 percent below their showing in the last city-state elections.
The three-year-old party came fresh from election success in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania two weeks ago, where it beat Merkel’s CDU into third place.
The party narrowly missed clearing the 5-percent threshold to enter the national Parliament in 2013.
The anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained support, capitalising on anger over Merkel’s open-door refugee policy that has allowed one million asylum seekers into Germany, with 70,000 of them coming to Berlin. On Sunday it entered its 10th state assembly, receiving 14.2 percent in the German capital.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she takes responsibility for her party’s poor showing in Berlin state elections on the weekend.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says despite two recent state election setbacks for her party, she stands by her decisions a year ago in dealing with the flood of migrants into Europe, but also recognizes the need to address people’s concerns.
AfD has been dogged by revelations about members espousing extremist views and having ties to far-right groups – including two candidates who stood for the party in Berlin.
Voter participation rose to 66.9 percent from 60.2 percent in the last election, and the three-year-old AfD drew a lot of its support from new voters, though it was also able to attract supporters from the SPD, the CDU and other parties. “But its foundations won’t be shaken”. She runs in national elections, scheduled for September next year.
Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, who has been sharply critical of the chancellor on the migrants’ issue, told Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Monday that the situation for his and Merkel’s Union bloc “has never been so hard”.
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The CSU’s Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soeder nonetheless launched a broadside, charging that Merkel’s government must “regain citizens’ support in the refugee question and finally strictly limit immigration and get a handle on the security problems”.
