Merkel takes on hard-right in final German vote push
BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her beleaguered rival Martin Schulz embarked on a final push for votes on Friday ahead of a weekend election, both seeking to beat back a challenge from the emboldened hard-right.
The 63-year-old Merkel, who polls say will cruise by a double-digit margin to a fourth term on Sunday, rallied supporters in the southern city of Munich, at the height of the annual Oktoberfest beer festival.
Schulz, 61, a former European Parliament president and leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, took to the stage in a central Berlin square in a last-ditch attempt to turn the race in his favor.
Despite Merkel’s commanding lead, the latest polls point to storm clouds on the horizon.
The anti-immigration, antiMuslim party Alternative for Germany looks set to easily clear the 5-percent hurdle to representation in parliament in a historic post-war first.
The prospect of some 60 MPs from a nativist outfit — branded “real Nazis” by Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel — taking seats in the Bundestag lower house has added
Gerd Appenzeller, columnist with Berlin daily Tagesspiegel
urgency and angst to what had long been dismissed as a suspense-free campaign.
“Go vote and vote for the parties that are 100 percent loyal to our constitution,” Merkel told Germans in a swipe at the AfD.
“We have to take a clear stance when it’s about our basic values.”
The AfD is currently polling at around 11 percent, deeply unsettling the mainstream parties that have governed Germany since the war.
A strong showing for the AfD could eat away at Merkel’s lead. Her CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU was at 36 percent according to a new poll on Thursday, close to their worst-ever score (35.1 percent in 1998).
Schulz this week took some succour from Merkel’s slipping poll numbers, hoping for a “last-minute turnaround” linked to “growing unease” in the population.
However, his SPD is set to fare even worse, around 22 percent, signaling an unmitigated disaster for Germany’s oldest party.
With the economy humming, business confidence robust and unemployment at post-reunification lows, analysts say there is simply little appetite for change at the top.
But Gerd Appenzeller of Berlin daily Tagesspiegel warned that the AfD’s success would hit like a bombshell on Sunday night.
“Although the AfD is highly unlikely to fare as well as the extreme right in France or the Netherlands, any relative success for the AfD will reflect badly to international onlookers, given German history,” he said.
“No amount of rage against Merkel, fury at the SPD, or resignation at modern politics can justify voting for a party that would — given the chance — shake this country’s foundations to the core.”
... Any relative success for the AfD will reflect badly to international onlookers, given German history.”