CHANCELLOR MERKEL VS. THE ULTRA-RIGHT

Oct 04, 2017 Editorial

The re-election of Angela Merkel for an historic fourth term last week as the Chancellor of Germany should be a wake-up call not only for Germany but for all of Europe due to the rise of the ultra-right-party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Merkel’s victory not only equals the record of her predecessor Helmut Kohl, who also served four terms as the Chancellor of Germany, but it also makes her one of the most successful female political leaders in the world in the modern era. She joins figures like Theresa May of Britain, Michelle Bachelet of Chile, and Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, among several other past and present female leaders.
It could well be that the time has come for a global push for gender parity in political leadership at both the national and international levels. With threats of war looming between the United States and North Korea, and the turbulent developments in Russia and Venezuela, perhaps it is time for more women like Merkel to take the lead and return the earth to security and prosperity.
Furthermore, with a severely damaging United States standing in the world, due to the rise of Donald Trump as president coupled with the threats posed by Britain’s exit from the European Union, the world will be looking to Merkel as a pivotal global leader to deliver in the wake of the dramatically shifted international political landscape.
Chancellor Merkel’s historic victory was clouded by the rise of extreme right AfD which for the first time won seats in the Bundestag—Germany’s equivalent of a Parliament. No party won an outright majority in the September 24 election to elect members to Germany’s 19th Bundestag. In turn the Bundestag will elect a Chancellor who must command the support of an absolute majority of its members in order to form a new government.
Like Guyana and a few other countries, Germany has a voting system based on proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post.
The election saw Merkel’s coalition party, The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) winning 33% of the votes cast, a drop of more than eight per cent and the lowest since 1949.
Its nearest rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD) whose leader Martin Schulz isthe former President of the European Union came in a distant second, with a post-war record low of 20.8 percent of the votes. And the AfD which had never won a seat before surprised everyone by winning 12.6% of the vote.
Over the years, Merkel was praised for her open-door immigration and pro-refugee policy which, by some estimates, have resulted in one million immigrants entering Germany after fleeing atrocities in Syria and elsewhere. Yet, experts claimed that it was this issue that cost her coalition to lose over one million votes and arguably played a role in the far-right AfD gaining seats in the Bundestag.It means that Merkel has her work cut out for her.
Chancellor Merkel faces tough times from the ultra-right AfD which has the third largest parliamentary seats in the Bundestag after Merkel’s CDU/CSU and the SPD. The AfD has not only opposed Merkel’s open-door immigration and pro-refugee policy, its extreme right agenda of anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and pro-Nazism will likely force her to change that policy.
In order to rule, Chancellor Merkel will have to seek cooperation with the pro-business liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) which obtained ten percent of the popular votes and the environmentalist Green Party with nine percent.
Such an arrangement however, will cause Merkel to reconcile her contradictory stances within her own coalition while balancing the tide of the AfD ultra-right policies.
Even though she faces serious problems ahead, amid all of this, Merkel is poised to become something of a pillar of strength and a leader of the world with her brand of robust politics.

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