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Merkel
faces key test of refugee policies in German regional elections
‘Super
Sunday’ elections could see CDU lose votes to anti-immigrant AfD,
but chancellor may still increase grip on power
Philip Oltermann in
Nürtingen
Wednesday 9 March
2016 15.49 GMT
As Angela Merkel
complained to a packed town hall in rural Swabia about Germans “who
forever see the risks and not the opportunities”, her party
faithful did not quite know whether to applaud or jeer.
Notionally, the
German chancellor had flown in to deepest Baden-Württemberg in order
to support the local conservative candidate ahead of Sunday’s
regional election.
But half a year
after Germany opened its doors to the thousands of refugees stranded
at Budapest station, the political landscape in the country has been
turned so dramatically upside down that it was hard to tell if she
was attacking the Christian Democrats’ political opponents in the
region – the Social Democrats and the Greens – or reprimanding
her own party.
“Many people
around the country are unhappy and may think now is the time to teach
the government a lesson,” Merkel said, pointing at the audience.
“But this is about you and your choices.”
This week’s “Super
Sunday” elections in three German states present 12 million voters
with a first chance to cast their verdict on Merkel’s management of
the refugee crisis. In Baden-Württemberg, where the chancellor’s
CDU still polled at 40% in September, her party faces a catastrophic
drubbing: for the first time since the second world war the
conservatives look set to lose their status as the biggest party in
the region.
A humiliating defeat
in its former stronghold, paired with a sceptical domestic reaction
to Monday’s migrant deal with Turkey, could galvanise the critics
inside Merkel’s party to topple their leader, some commentators
speculate.
Anti-refugee party
Alternative für Deutschland, meanwhile, is polling at double digits
in all three states – a historic achievement for a party that was
only founded three years ago and looked close to collapse when its
founder left last July.
“We’ll lose
8-10% of our votes to the AfD”, said Hans-Günther Knaupp, a lawyer
and CDU member, at Tuesday night’s rally. “Her course on the
refugee crisis is the right one for the world, but it’s the wrong
one for her party here in Baden-Württemberg”. If he had the
chance, Knaupp said, he would like to ask Merkel why she couldn’t
take a step towards her critics on the right.
Over the last seven
months, Merkel has repeatedly resisted calls for caps on immigration,
insisting on a quota system for distributing refugees that has been
widely snubbed by most other EU member states. “It’s a complete
catastrophe,” said another party member, who preferred to remain
anonymous.
Yet the topsy-turvy
logic of the current political situation in Germany is such that a
defeat for Merkel’s party could also be interpreted as a sign of
support for her leadership. Winfried Kretschmann, the incumbent Green
party state premier of Baden-Württemberg who is expected be Sunday’s
big winner, has been such a vocal supporter of the chancellor’s
open-border stance that conservatives have labelled him her
“stalker”.
CDU candidate Guido
Wolf, meanwhile, has repeatedly distanced himself from Merkel’s
refugee policy, refusing on Tuesday to support her description of the
Turkey deal as a “breakthrough”.
Outside the rally in
Nürtingen on Tuesday, a group of about 30 Left party and Green party
supporters who had gathered to protest against the TTIP trade deal
between the EU and the US admitted that they were torn in their
feelings towards Germany’s leader.
“She has made so
many mistakes in the past,” said Peter Meisel, a pensioner carrying
a placard recycled from the height of the Greek debt crisis, “but
last summer she was right. Merkel is the only woman who understood
that the right for asylum is a fundamental right.”
Far from being
certain to unseat the German chancellor, Sunday’s election could
easily end up tightening her grip on power. There are likely to be
big losses for the Social Democrats in Saxony-Anhalt – and stunning
gains for the AfD of up to 19% – but Merkel’s party looks certain
to remain the biggest in the eastern German state.
In
Rhineland-Palatinate, the incumbent Social Democrat state premier is
head-to-head in the polls with CDU candidate Julia Klöckner, who has
been touted as a potential successor to Merkel in the event of a
party coup. A narrow win would register as a gain for Merkel’s
party, while a narrow loss would clip the potential rebel leader’s
wings.
While Merkel’s
course during the refugee crisis has lost her many traditional
supporters on the right, it has also gained her new admirers in the
centre and on the left. “Merkel is growing out of being a workaday
politician,” eulogised Heribert Prantl in centre-left daily
Süddeutsche Zeitung. “She comes across as statesmanlike; she is
becoming Germany’s first stateswoman.”
In a Forsa poll
published on Wednesday, the chancellor’s approval ratings have
soared to 50%, their highest this year..
Not everyone agrees
that the chancellor has deserted her pragmatism of old. “The secret
to Merkel’s success is still that she is incredibly flexible,”
said Hajo Schumacher, a journalist who a decade ago wrote his PhD on
her party management. “She is able to operate on a wide scale of
political methodologies, from brutal and principled revenge to
chequebook diplomacy, as we are seeing it in her treatment of Turkey
at the moment, or in her dealings with David Cameron last month –
it’s unimaginable that she would have made concessions like that to
someone in her own party.”
With her latest
management of the refugee crisis, the German chancellor had already
performed a U-turn on her open-borders stance from last summer,
Schumacher said. “She is a master of timing, especially in times of
crisis. She tends to turn when the polls turn, but not a minute
before.”
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Voters
set to punish Merkel at key 'Super Sunday' poll
Published: 09 Mar
2016 08:25 GMT+01:00
Chancellor Angela
Merkel's party risks a drubbing at key state elections Sunday as
voters punish the German leader for her liberal refugee policy, while
the right-wing populist AfD eyes major gains as it scoops up the
protest vote.
More than 12 million
voters are due to elect three new regional parliaments for the
southwestern states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate,
as well as eastern Saxony-Anhalt in the so-called Super Sunday polls.
The elections are
the biggest since a record influx of refugees to Germany, and
disgruntled voters are expected to seize on the opportunity to hit
the ruling coalition where it hurts.
"These
elections are very important... as they will serve as a litmus test
for the government's disputed policy" on refugees, Düsseldorf
University political scientist Jens Walther told AFP.
Surveys in the
run-up to the polls have shown Alternative for Germany (AfD) steadily
gaining momentum, with the latest published Monday by Bild daily
showing backing reaching double-digit levels in all three states.
Merkel's Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) was meanwhile bracing for a poor showing,
particularly in its traditional stronghold of Baden-Württemberg,
with the Bild poll showing support sliding by 10.5 percentage points
to 28.5 percent -- putting it for the first time behind the Greens,
while the AfD snatched 12.5 percent.
"These are
numbers that really hit us," said Guido Wolf, the CDU's leading
candidate in the southwest, adding that Sunday's was the "most
difficult election campaign" the party has had to run.
In
Rhineland-Palatinate where the fortunes of the CDU had been rising,
leading candidate Julia Klöckner -- who some believe could be
Merkel's successor -- is expected only to help the party to a tie
with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), at 35 percent.
In Saxony-Anhalt,
where the CDU still has a large lead in the Bild poll with 29
percent, AfD has a stunning 19 percent that almost draws it equal
with the second placed Left Party, on 20 percent.
'A lot to lose’
Merkel has been
under intense pressure to change course and shut Germany's doors
after 1.1 million refugees -- many of them Syrians -- arrived in
Europe's biggest economy last year alone.
But she has
resolutely refused to impose a cap on arrivals, insisting instead on
common European action that includes distributing refugees among the
EU's 28 member states.
Barely a week before
the polls, Merkel told activists to take heart despite falling
support for the party, saying: "It will pay off in the end."
But public opinion
towards her stance was divided, and AfD has capitalised on the
darkening mood.
AfD began life in
2013 as an anti-euro party, but has since morphed into one that
sparked a storm in January after suggesting police may have to shoot
at migrants at the borders.
In what could be a
preview of Sunday's polls, local election results published Monday in
Hesse show support for AfD reaching 13.2 percent, propelling it to
become the third biggest party in the western state.
But its inroads into
western states have sparked alarm in a Germany mindful of its Nazi
past.
With an eye on the
upcoming polls, Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned voters that "we
have a lot to lose if we deal carelessly with social stability and
democracy".
Merkel herself
described AfD as a "party that does not bring society together
and offers no appropriate solutions to problems, but only stokes
prejudices and divisions", while Finance Minister Wolfgang
Schäuble branded them a "shame for Germany".
Some 142 civic
groups, including police unions, Jewish and Muslim organisations and
aid groups, also published a joint appeal urging voters to turn up at
the polls as a show of strength "against all forms of hate,
racism, prejudices or violence".
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