German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered a setback Sunday in Berlin state parliament elections as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) made big gains amid tension caused by the refugee crisis. As an editorial in today’s newspaper explains, the center-left SPD and Green party are often reluctant to work with far-left Die Linke party.
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The AfD has campaigned heavily on the migrant issue, playing to voters’ fears about the integration of the roughly 1 million migrants who entered Germany in 2015.
The anti-immigrant and anti-EU AfD party came fifth, but its score, of nearly 14 percent, saw it enter the regional assembly for the first time and showed that it is becoming a force to be reckoned with ahead of federal elections due next year. “The CDU and I can’t go along with that”.
The results from the Berlin state election has raised more doubts about whether Europe’s most powerful leader will stand for a fourth term.
Forecast just days ago to win as much as 15 per cent and come third, the anti-Muslim party was beaten into fifth place by the Greens and the Left Party, which each won around 15.5 per cent.
The result proved that the Alternative for Germany party is not as popular in the cosmopolitan capital as it is elsewhere in Germany, but it managed to draw considerable support, mostly from the eastern districts of the city. In Berlin, both the CDU and SPD – which govern together at the national level – lost about 5 percentage points of support on Sunday.
“The voters don’t realize that they’re going to vote for a party that doesn’t want to differentiate itself from the extreme right”, said Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
“They’re a single-issue party” focused on the refugee crisis, said McAllister, the former Lower Saxony prime minister.
It comes in the wake of Mrs Merkel’s decision to keep the borders open as hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants arrived in the country from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Sigmar Gabriel, the national head of the Social Democrats, which govern in a coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said “we don’t find it good” that the AfD will now be represented in the city-state of Berlin’s parliament. This news story is related to Print/150922-Merkel-party-takes-hit-in-Berlin-vote-anti-migrant-AfD-gains/ – breaking news, latest news, pakistan ne.
Another analyst, Kai Arzheimer of Mainz University, also predicted tensions would rise between the CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU, but he stressed the alliance was unlikely to change its top candidate, Merkel.
Speaking Monday alongside her Christian Democratic Party’s Berlin mayoral candidate Frank Henkel, Merkel called the election result “bitter”.
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“When we can reach double digits even on hard turf like Berlin, then we are an established party”, Jörg Meuthen, AfD co-leader said.
