The conservative party of Angela Merkel Sunday recorded the worst result in its history for the regional elections in Berlin, in a climate of growing discontent about immigration which continues to benefit the populist right.
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But she said: “The almost 15% win for the right wing AfD even in this very liberal city shows that, like many other parts of the country, it has surged to become a real political force that Merkel can not ignore”.
She says she knows many disagree with her policies and she’s prepared to discuss changes, but that if people simply don’t want Muslim asylum-seekers because they are Muslim, that’s counter to her Christian Democratic Party’s basic principles, as well as Germany’s. “The CDU and I can not go along with that”.
Henkel added it was wrong to think that there had been no improvement over the past year.
In the regional election In Berlin, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered such a setback that Berlin will have the very first left-wing triple coalition in its history. The Left Party, an anti-capitalist group with ties to former East Germany, also did well.
Many voters drifted further to the left and right, with the Left Party climbing 3.9 points to 15.6 percent.
Meanwhile, a 14.2 percent of the vote enabled the three-year-old right-wing AfD to enter Berlin’s state parliament, the 10th among Germany’s 16 states. German media reported that a poll found about 22 percent of those voting for the AfD in Berlin supported the CDU in 2011.
A year before a national election, the result is set to raise pressure on Merkel and deepen rifts in her conservative camp, with more sniping expected from her CSU allies in Bavaria. The AfD were able to tap into a large portion of the population in the city who had never voted before giving them just under 15 per cent of the vote, although initial exit polls predicted a result several percentage points lower.
Disillusionment is high over the capital’s notoriously inefficient bureaucracy and issues such as years of delays in opening its new airport.
“We are all angry that the AfD got in”, Michael Mueller, Berlin’s mayor and the Social Democrats’ leading candidate, told cheering supporters in the capital.
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These two parties will govern in a liberal coalition of the Berlin state along with the center-left Social Democratic Party. A backlash against the Chancellor’s immigrant policy has raised questions about whether Merkel, Europe’s most powerful leader, will stand for a fourth term next year. Three more state elections take place next spring.
