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Merkel gets boost with ally’s party win

By AFP
December 09, 2018

HAMBURG: The victory in a party leadership battle of a close ally of Angela Merkel greatly boosts her chances of seeing out her fourth term, but 2019 will bring new threats for the world’s most powerful woman.

As the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) wrapped up a conference in Hamburg on Saturday, Merkel, 64, could celebrate that her handpicked deputy party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, known as AKK, won the race to succeed her after 18 years at the helm.

The career politician dubbed “mini Merkel” by the media is now in pole position to lead Germany’s biggest party into the next general election, set for 2021.

She would then have a strong chance of replacing the chancellor when Merkel leaves the stage for good.

The CDU’s choice marked a vote for relative political stability in Europe as British Prime Minister Theresa May faces Brexit turmoil and French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is rocked by violent street protests.

Merkel made the surprise decision in October not to stand again for the CDU leadership following a string of poll setbacks.

“I don’t see her as weakened at all -- on the contrary, she can continue to govern as a powerful chancellor,” Matthias Middelberg, a CDU delegate from Hanover, said of Merkel, who was this week again crowned the world’s most powerful woman by Forbes magazine.

“And now she can count on a party leader she can work well with.”

“Merkel can now work with a woman she’s known for a long time and who won’t harbour ambitions of chasing her out of office. Meanwhile Kramp-Karrenbauer will welcome the chance to prepare her leap to the chancellery,” top-selling daily Bild said.

News weekly Der Spiegel noted that the CDU’s moderate course under Merkel had kept the trained physicist in power since 2005.

But it warned that centrist continuity under AKK could leave more conservative Christian Democrats feeling politically homeless.

It also allows the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the third biggest party in parliament, to seize on fears linked to migration and crime and pick off traditional CDU voters.

Three risky state elections are on the calendar next year in the ex-communist east, where the party has made major inroads.

Bild noted that Merkel’s fateful 2015 decision to welcome more than one million asylum seekers fleeing crisis zones such as Syria and Iraq continues to roil German politics.

“It is essential for the CDU’s survival to stop the exodus toward the AfD, to find the right words to discuss asylum policy and immigration and to turn them into action,” it said.