A nationalist, anti-immigration party has beaten Angela Merkel’s conservatives into third place in a state election in her own political fiefdom. Germany, which took in over one million refugees past year, is, per CNN, “the most open country in Europe to asylum seekers”.
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At the CDU party congress in 2015 “we said that not even a country like Germany can receive such a large number of refugees each year”, Merkel said.
Merkel has not yet announced if she will run for a fourth term in office next autumn due to pressure from the sister party of her CDU, the Bavarian CSU, according to Der Spiegel magazine.
According to a Reuters report on the elections, the AfD, which was founded in 2013, has now won seats in nine of the 16 state assemblies in Germany.
The Social Democrats grabbed a comfortable win with 30 percent of the votes. CDU received just 19 percent of the votes, the lowest it’s ever received in Merkel’s home state.
The outcome was “a protest against the policies in Berlin”, said its secretary general Andreas Scheuer, renewing calls for an upper limit to the refugee intake.
Together with Berlin’s elections in two weeks, Sunday’s polls are also a key test ahead of general elections next year, when Merkel’s decision exactly a year ago to let in tens of thousands of Syrian and other migrants is expected to be a key point of contention.
Following a spate of sexual assaults blamed on North African men on New Year’s Eve in Germany and a series of a bloody attacks this summer, some of which were claimed by the Daesh terrorist group, the mood of most Germans has darkened, with concerns growing stronger about how to integrate the newcomers.
She added that “the issue of integration will play a huge role in that, and the question of the repatriation of refugees who have no residence permit here”.
Meanwhile, one of Mrs. Merkel’s top deputies Michael Grosse-Groehmer said, “This isn’t pretty for us”.
Sunday’s result could make it more hard for Mrs Merkel to bury a festering dispute with the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian arm of her conservative bloc, which has long criticised her decision to open the borders and advocated an annual cap on migrants. The voters made a clear statement against Merkel’s disastrous immigration policies.
While her government projects some 300,000 refugees will enter Germany in 2016, Merkel said there’s a gap in public perception that she intends to address.
While the Social Democratic Party emerged on top, it and other parties on the left also lost voters to the AfD – suggesting the AfD has the ability to poach voters from both sides of the political spectrum.
Its latest achievement was hailed by French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who wrote on Twitter: “What was impossible yesterday has become possible: the AfD patriots have swept away Merkel’s party!”
“We have to close or to protect our borders”.
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On Sunday, AfD won support from across the spectrum to take 20.8 percent of votes, its second-best result yet.
