Angela Merkel, who has been Chancellor since 2005, announced on Monday that she would not seek re-election when her term expires in 2021. She said – “This fourth term is my last term as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the next Bundestag election in 2021, I will not run again as Chancellor. I will not run for the German Bundestag any more, and I do not want any other political office.”

 

Merkel also announced that she would stand down from the chairmanship of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party after 18 years in the post. The announcement confirms that Merkel’s power within her own party has weakened and her popularity has plunged, following a disappointing regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday.

 

Merkel’s own CDU party and her coalition partner in Berlin, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), saw heavy losses in the state of Hesse. Under her leadership, CDU received only 27% of the vote, down 11.3% points since the last election in 2013. The SPD, on the other hand, saw its support fall from 30.7% in 2013 to 19.8% in the vote. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

This weekend’s election delivers a second blow to Merkel’s fragile “grand coalition” government. The Christian Social Union, or CSU – the Bavarian sister party to the CDU – lost its majority in the Bavarian state parliament. The CSU has dominated politics in the state since the end of World War II, ruling for all but three years over the course of nearly seven decades.

 

Meanwhile, the Greens gains 19.7% of the vote (up from 11.1%) and the AfD won 13.2% of the vote, tripling its vote share from 2013 and allowing it to enter parliament for the first time. Adding salt to the injury, the alliance of Merkel’s CDU party and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD has been plagued by infighting and argument over policy.

 

Angela Merkel has nobody but herself to blame. In spite of winning the federal elections on September 2017, her chance to become the German Chancellor for the fourth term was already in question. Her CDU-CSU (Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union) alliance received 33% of the vote – a drop of 8.6%.

She had single-handedly driven her party – CDU – to its worst result since 1949. It was so bad that its junior coalition partner, the SPD, quit the “grand coalition” after suffering its worst result since World War II – getting only 20.5% of the vote, down 5.2% from 2013’s result. Merkel managed to secure her fourth term only after successfully persuaded SPD to rejoin the “grand coalition” in March this year.

 

Back then, Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance only won 246 seats, when 355 seats were required to form a simple majority government. The SPD’s flip-flop – agreed to form another “grand coalition” – ends almost 6 months of uncertainty in German politics, the longest the country has been without a government in its post-war history. And now, everything falls apart again, and there’s nothing Merkel can do this time.

 

Kal Klose, the chairman of the Greens party in Hesse, said the regional election had shown that “the people don’t like the style of how the grand coalition works.” There are growing calls in the SPD to abandon the coalition. Nancy Faeser, General Secretary of SPD Hessen, said – “It’s a very bad result and therefore need to figure out now how we regain credibility and the trust of the citizens.

The continuous rise of the nationalist and anti-immigrant AfD party proves one thing – Merkel’s 2015 refugee crisis was the reason for everything that happens today. Both AfD and FDP won 94 seats and 80 seats respectively after the federal elections last September – from zero seat last election. The AfD is now represented in all 16 regional state parliaments and the Bundestag.

 

Sunday’s result is the final piece of evidence that the AfD has established itself within the German party system, thanks to Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming Muslim refugees into the country which saw a mass influx from of some 1.2 million asylum seekers. It was Merkel’s arrogance and ignorance which sparked a backlash that opened the door of German Bundestag to the far-right AfD.

 

Merkel supporters and liberals had tried to associate AfD with Nazism. But the finger-pointing was overwhelmed by Germans who got absolutely sick and tired of unproductive Muslim refugees and terror attacks ever since. In July 2016 alone, Germany was hit with 5 violent attacks which saw 10 people killed and dozens more injured in separate gun, bomb, axe, machete attacks.

Merkel happily welcomed 1.2 million Muslim refugees into Germany in 2015, only to be repaid with mass sexual assaults / rapes by 1,000 Muslim migrants/refugees in Cologne, Germany, during 2016 New Year’s Eve. Under her administration, the police and Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker were under instruction to cover-up the “Rapefugees” crisis.

 

She then set aside at least €90 million (US$95.7 million; £76.7 million; RM425 million) of taxpayers money to pay for her own mistakes. She was reduced to offer free cash to migrants or refugees willing to leave Germany. There was also a jaw-dropping report that the nation has been importing junks instead of talents – a whopping 1.1-million unemployable migrants.

 

Now that the Chancellor has announced her decision to quit only in 2021, the question is whether she should stay for another 3 years. After the CDU elects a new leader, probably on December 7, she would be seen as a lame duck. It was Angela Merkel herself who said previously that the leader of CDU and the post of Chancellor should be the same person.

 

Other Articles That May Interest You …

• Fails To Form Government – Merkel’s 4th Term As Germany Chancellor In Jeopardy
• Congrats Merkel, You Drove Your Alliance To Their Worst Result Since 1949
• Drunken Refugees Riot In Germany Because Of Poor Mobile Phone Signal
• Merkel’s Gift To Migrants – “We’ll Pay You Money, Lots of Money, If You Leave”
• Merkel’s Christmas Gift – Refugee Terrorized Christmas Market With A Truck
• After “Double Humiliations”, Now Cocky Merkel Wishes She Could Turn Back Time
• Germany A “Time-Bomb” – But Defiant Merkel Still Wants More Refugees
• Germany Has Been Importing Junk Migrants – 1.1-Million “Unemployable”
• Germany Under Attack – Molest, Rape, Sexually Assault By 1,000+ Arab Mobs

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October 29th, 2018 by financetwitter

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