In Merkel, German history in the making

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pictured after she cast her vote at a polling station in Berlin during general elections on September 24, 2017. PHOTO| AFP

What you need to know:

  • If there is one conviction Merkel holds dear, it is a lesson from her upbringing in communist East Germany — a firm belief that Germany and Europe must stay competitive and debt-free in a rapidly changing global economy.
  • A top student, she excelled in Russian, which would later help her keep up the dialogue with President Vladimir Putin, who was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Berlin Wall tumbled in 1989.
  • The shape of the next coalition will determine how Germany relates to Europe and the world. Campaign has been largely devoid of global issues. But Germany has been dubbed a beacon of stability in a world buffeted by Trump’s election, Britain’s decision to quit the EU, and friction in the EU over tensions in Hungary and Poland.

Angela Merkel has been derided as Europe’s austerity queen, cheered as a saviour by refugees and hailed as the new leader of the free world.
But as the pastor’s daughter raised behind the Iron Curtain heads towards a likely fourth term at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy, many Germans simply call her the eternal chancellor.

Mutti (Mummy) Merkel, with her pragmatic, modest and reassuringly bland style, has perfected the art of staying in power in a wealthy, ageing nation that tends to favour continuity over change.

In the turbulent times of Donald Trump, Brexit and multiple global crises, the 63-year-old has become the bedrock in a country concerned with maintaining its enviable growth and employment rates.

If there is one conviction Merkel holds dear, it is a lesson from her upbringing in communist East Germany — a firm belief that Germany and Europe must stay competitive and debt-free in a rapidly changing global economy.

Germans have thanked Merkel by keeping her in power since she became their youngest and first female chancellor in 2005, a contemporary of long-gone leaders George W Bush, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac.

Seemingly devoid of vanity and indifferent to the trappings of power, she lives in a Berlin flat with her media-shy scientist husband Joachim Sauer, shops in a local supermarket and spends holidays hiking in the Alps.
When international newspapers, after Trump’s surprise victory last year, declared Merkel the new torchbearer of liberal democracy, she waved off the accolade as grotesque and absurd.

Though frequently criticised for sitting out tough challenges, Merkel has punctuated her reign with bold and surprising decisions — from scrapping nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster to opening German borders to more than a million asylum seekers since 2015.

The migrant influx cost her dearly with voters and EU neighbours and led many to predict her political demise.

But as the number of new arrivals eased off and Merkel’s government pushed through tougher asylum policies, her poll ratings have edged back up to pre-crisis levels.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during an election campaign rally of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Ulm, southern Germany, on September 22, 2017. PHOTO| AFP

So strong is her support that German media reports tend to ridicule her centre-left challengers as luckless operators on political suicide missions, destined to be roadkill as the Merkel juggernaut powers forward.

The chancellor herself usually refuses to mention her opponents by name or engage in spirited political dialogue, lending a slightly dreamy atmosphere to recent election campaigns and infuriating her shadow-boxing rivals.

Martin Schulz, her temperamental challenger, lashed out in June, labelling Merkel’s apparent tactic of keeping politics as unexciting as possible “an attack on democracy” — a comment that earned him stern rebuke from legions of the chancellor’s supporters.

But many political commentators also charge that Merkel has plunged Germany into an apolitical slumber while seeming to grow ever more remote.

Alexander Osang of Der Spiegel recently labelled her the “woman in amber”, as impenetrable “as a sphinx, diva or queen”, whose speeches were akin to “mass hypnosis”.

Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in 1954 in the port city of Hamburg.

Weeks later her father, a leftist Lutheran clergyman, moved the family to a small town in the communist East at a time most people were headed the other way.

Biographers say life in a police state taught Merkel to hide her true thoughts behind a poker face.

Like most students, she joined the state’s socialist youth movement but rejected an offer to inform for the Stasi secret police while also staying clear of risky pro-democracy activism.

A top student, she excelled in Russian, which would later help her keep up the dialogue with President Vladimir Putin, who was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Berlin Wall tumbled in 1989.
During that momentous upheaval, Merkel joined the nascent Democratic Awakening group, which later merged with the Christian Democrats of then-chancellor Helmut Kohl, who fondly if patronisingly dubbed Merkel his “girl”.

But Merkel’s mentor was not the last politician to underestimate her and pay the price.

When Kohl became embroiled in a campaign finance scandal in 1999, Merkel openly urged her party to drop the self-declared old warhorse.

The move, which has been described as “Merkelvellian”, kicked off her meteoric rise.

As an outsider, she remade the CDU, anchoring it in the political centre by pushing progressive social policies, abolishing compulsory military service and scrapping nuclear power.

She emerged as Europe’s go-to leader during the sovereign debt crisis, though she was derided as a puritanical austerity queen in crisis-wracked southern countries.

A decade on, she is still there, and her reign may yet exceed that of her one-time mentor Kohl, especially as no serious challenger from within her party has emerged so far.

COMPARED TO OTHER WESTERN DEMOCRACIES, ELECTIONS HERE ARE VERY COMPLICATED

If popular Chancellor Angela Merkel faced a US presidential-style vote, she would almost certainly win by a landslide — but things are not so simple under Germany’s complex election system. In the end, her conservatives may be forced into torturous coalition haggling, possibly with their biggest campaign rivals, to stay in power and secure Merkel a fourth term. The reason is post-war Germany’s election system which mixes the “winner-takes-all” approach of Britain and the US with the proportional representation system that allows for more small parties.
The simple facts: A total of 61.5 million people over the age of 18 are eligible to vote for the next government of the European Union’s most populous nation and its biggest economy. Women voters are 31.7 million while men are 29.8 million. Voter participation four years ago stood at 71.5 per cent, up slightly from 2009 and higher than in many other Western democracies. When German voters enter the polling booth, they make two crosses on the ballot paper — one for a direct representative in their local district, the other for their preferred political party.

Five per cent hurdle: The first vote is meant to ensure that each of Germany’s 299 districts is represented in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. In the second — and in many ways crucial — vote, citizens chose a party. Ahead of election day, the parties write up their “candidate lists” in each of the 16 states. The names at the top have the biggest chance of getting a seat. The party with the most votes then gets to send the most lawmakers to the lower house. For example, if a party scores three direct seats through the first vote but is eligible for 10 seats overall through the second vote, seven more names on the party’s state are also given seats. A complication arises when the direct and party votes are out of balance because voters “split” their ballot. When a party earns more direct seats than it is entitled to through its share of the party vote, it is granted the extra seats anyway. These are called “overhang” seats.
As a result, the size of the Bundestag can expand far beyond its minimum size of 598 seats.
After the 2013 election, the chamber had 630 lawmakers — a figure which could grow larger. Parties which score below five per cent of the second vote stay out of parliament altogether. This is meant to prevent excessive political fragmentation and stop potentially extremist parties. Both the pro-business Free Democrats and the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany are expected to win seats this time after falling short of the bar in 2013. Once polling booths close at 1600 GMT on Sunday, the question will be whether any alliance of parties has an absolute majority to elect a chancellor — half of all the lower house seats plus one.

WHY FORMING THE NEXT COALITION MAY NOT BE A WALK IN THE PARK

First Daughter and Adviser to US President Ivanka Trump, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and German Chancellor Angela Merkel share a laugh at the start of a panel discussion at the W20 women’s empowerment summit. PHOTO| AFP

Angela Merkel was always poised to sail to victory in Germany’s general election, but her win is likely to be clouded by the entry of an Islamophobic hard-right party in parliament and prospects of tough coalition talks. Here are the takeaways from the campaign and looming challenges ahead.

Mixed win

Merkel was projected to win her fourth term, putting her on track to match the post-war record 16 years in office held by Helmut Kohl. But the score that her CDU ends up with could be a dampener as it is projected to fall short of the 40-per cent minimum it has set as target. Opinion polls put it at 36 per cent, close to the 35.1 per cent it scored in 1998 when Kohl lost power and ushered in an SPD-led coalition. Such a low score risks emboldening voices of dissent in her party and her right-leaning Bavarian allies, the CSU. It would also complicate talks to forming the next coalition.

Hard-right party arrives

The nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is expected to cross the five-per cent hurdle, marking the first time such an openly Islamophobic and anti-immigration party is entering parliament after World War II. In an editorial headlined “Merkel, the mother of the AfD”, Spiegel Online columnist Jakob Augstein said she should be voted out simply “for failing to stop Nazis from entering the Bundestag”.

AfD is credited with a little more than 10 per cent in the polls and hopes to win seats for around 60 deputies. While the far-right has been part of Europe’s political landscape for years, the presence of a nationalist hard-right party with candidates calling for Germany to stop atoning for its role in World War II smashes a taboo. Mainstream parties have ruled out working with AfD, with Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel calling its leaders “real Nazis”.

One of its leading candidates, Alexander Gauland, says Islamist rhetoric and violence and terror “have roots in the Koran and in the teachings of Islam”.

US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrive for a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 17, 2017. PHOTO| AFP

Which government?

Merkel and her conservative alliance are unlikely to gain an outright majority to rule alone, and her options for a coalition are more complicated than thought. The most straightforward and stable option would be renewing the lease on the current right-left “grand coalition”, with the Social Democratic Party as the junior partner.

But the SPD is not keen on labouring in Merkel’s shadow for another four years. With polls suggesting that Germany’s oldest party is headed for a record low score, fears are running high within the SPD that getting in bed with conservatives again would cause it to further lose its working-class appeal.

The liberal Free Democrats (FDP), staging a comeback after four years in the political wilderness, are traditionally a good fit for Merkel’s conservatives. But polls suggest that they would fall short of or narrowly reach a majority, meaning such a coalition risks instability. Merkel could further expand the coalition to include the Greens. But keeping cohesion between the right-flank of her party and Bavarian allies — who are staunch defenders of the scandal-tainted automotive industry, and the environmental party calling for combustion motors to be phased out — would be only one of many tough issues to thrash out. As such, no one should hold their breath for a coalition to emerge swiftly after the votes are counted.

Negotiations for a new government are likely to drag on to year’s end.

Which way forward?

The shape of the next coalition will determine how Germany relates to Europe and the world. Campaign has been largely devoid of global issues. But Germany has been dubbed a beacon of stability in a world buffeted by Trump’s election, Britain’s decision to quit the EU, and friction in the EU over tensions in Hungary and Poland. As such, it is being asked to shoulder more responsibilities, including greater military engagement in trouble spots.

“Germany finds itself confronted with changes from elsewhere, and the geopolitical upheavals run counter to its traditional attraction to the east and its attachment to an alliance with the US. It id a brutal change,” said Jean-Dominique Giuliani, president of the Robert Schuman Foundation.