Far
right and refugee crisis pile pressure on Angela Merkel
With
three German states voting on ‘Super Sunday’, the chancellor’s
Christian Democrats are braced for a rough ride
Kate Connolly in
Berlin
Saturday 12 March
2016 21.07 GMT
As a pastor’s
daughter whose Protestant ethics are said to be one of the defining
characteristics of her more than 10-year-long tenure as chancellor of
Germany, Angela Merkel has made it a strict rule never to drink
during Lent.
But in the past few
days travelling around Germany to bolster the chances of her
embattled Christian Democrats before elections on Sunday, she
apparently broke that rule and was seen to sip from a glass or two of
some of the country’s best regional beers. Insiders say the tipples
offered to her have actually been non-alcoholic. But the message is
clear. “I am one of the people,” as she said herself.
It’s a message her
advisers have been keen for her to hammer home as she faces one of
the most challenging tests yet of her more than 10 years as
chancellor. The extent to which Germans will buy the message when one
in five of them go to the polls in three separate states remains to
be seen.
Many are at worst
mildly disgruntled, at best greatly angered by Merkel’s open-door
refugee policy, which has seen well over 1.1 million refugees enter
the country in the past year or more. Following campaigns that have
been dominated by the refugee issue, Merkel is expected to be
punished by those who say they have yet to be consulted on a decision
that will define Germany’s future for decades to come.
“Super Sunday”,
as it’s been dubbed, is the culmination of a dramatic seven months
that started on a euphoric note with Germans welcoming refugees with
open arms, teddy bears and bottles of water at Munich railway station
in September, after Merkel signalled that Syrian refugees would be
warmly received. But while tens of thousands of Germans joined in the
effort to welcome them, resentment among others soon triggered arson
attacks on refugee accommodation and fuelled the anti-refugee rallies
of the protest movement Pegida.
The nadir of
Merkel’s open-door policy was reached during New Year celebrations
in Cologne, when hundreds of women were reported as having been
sexually harassed and raped by men of largely north African and
Arabic background. The repercussions were immense and pressure was
put on Merkel to close German borders.
Merkel’s Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), whose support has eroded across the country
as a direct result of the refugee crisis, is expected to take a
bashing, struggling to stay in power in Saxony-Anhalt and failing to
take back either Rhineland-Palatinate from the Social Democrats (SPD)
or Baden-Württemberg from the Greens. The winners are likely to be
the rightwing populists whose presence has shifted the tectonic
plates of Germany’s political landscape.
Alternative für
Deutschland, which used to ride on an anti-EU ticket but which in
recent months has switched its focus to refugees, is expected to make
considerable gains in all three states, but particularly in
Saxony-Anhalt. In the former East German state, it is predicted to
gain as much as 20% of the vote, up from around 5% just six months
ago. It would be an extraordinary and historic gain for a party that
did not exist a little more than three years ago and last year was on
the verge of collapse.
The AfD’s
40-year-old leader, Frauke Petry, who did a chemistry degree at
Reading University, has set her party the goal of entering the
Bundestag in 2017 and the government in 2021. If it gains second
place in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of the Social Democrats, as some
pollsters predict it will, it would be a huge psychological and
political blow to the established parties. It would shatter the CDU
coalition with the SPD in the state, significant because it is a
precise reflection of the make-up of the federal government, and
signal that the AfD is capable of doing the same on the national
level at the next general election.
But while the
elections will be an important barometer of the political atmosphere,
the many political observers around the world who are predicting the
demise of Merkel if her party takes a drubbing are unlikely to be
proved right. “Everyone [in the CDU] including opponents of Merkel
know that there’s no one else so far with whom the party could
secure better votes in the federal election than with Merkel,” said
Robert Rossmann of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “That, rather than
their love of the chancellor’s refugee policy, will be what keeps
Merkel in power.”
But neither is
Merkel’s prediction, in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung,
that the AfD will run out of steam once the government is seen to
have the refugee situation under control, necessarily very realistic.
“Even if the
numbers of refugees decreases, the refugee question is likely to
occupy Germany for a long time. The integration will take years and
cost billions,” said Rossmann. “Not only that, but the AfD is an
anti-system party whose success feeds off the deep-seated resentments
to be found in an alarmingly large proportion of the population
against the whole political establishment … that won’t disappear
just because the refugee numbers go down.”
At an AfD rally in
Magdeburg in the state of Saxony-Anhalt last week, that resentment
was tangible. A man nearing retirement, who identified himself only
as Björn, said he blamed Merkel for watering down German identity.
“Just today I saw a group of schoolchildren. They were all
dark-skinned, except for the little girl with blond-brown hair
walking at the very back,” he said. “Now 54% of
over-six-year-olds have an immigrant background. It’s really
alarming.”
Another AfD
supporter, 25-year-old Till, said he had been teaching refugees
German but had quickly lost heart. “The disrespectful attitudes of
the Muslim men towards the women was really disturbing,” he said.
“I preferred to teach Russians and Brazilians instead. I worry that
Merkel has opened the floodgates and Germany will never be the same
again.”
A taxi driver from
the city, who said for decades he had voted CDU and would now be
voting AfD, said: “The problem is I don’t feel any of the issues
being discussed have relevance for ordinary working people. Those who
struggle on a wage of €1,200 (£930) a month which never goes up,
while other costs of living do – what has the refugee crisis or the
state of Europe got to do with us?”
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