Angela Merkel wins fourth term

BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel clinched a fourth term in Germany’s general election on Sunday, but her victory was clouded by the hardright AFD party winning its first seats in parliament. Merkel, who after 12 years in power held a double-digit lead for most of the campaign, scored around 33 percent of the vote with her conservative Christian Union (CDU/CSU) bloc, according to exit polls. Its nearest rivals, the Social Democrats and their candidate Martin Schulz, came in a distant second, with about 20-21 percent. But in a bombshell for the German establishment, the anti-islam, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AFD) captured around 13 percent vote.

BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives beat their rivals on Sunday to win her a fourth term in an election that will also bring a farright party into Germany’s Parliament for the first time in more than half a century, exit polls showed.

After shock election results last year, from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, many look to Merkel to rally a bruised liberal Western order, tasking her with leading a post-brexit Europe.

She must now form a coalition government — an arduous process that could take months as all potential partners are unsure whether they really want to share power with her.

Merkel’s conservative bloc won 32.5 per cent of the vote, making them the largest parliamentary group, an exit poll for broadcaster ARD indicated. However, that was down from 41.5 per cent in the last election, in 2013.

Support for their closest rivals, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) which are currently junior partners in a so-called “grand coalition” with Merkel, slumped to 20.0 percent — a new post-war low. The SPD ruled out a re-run of that tie-up.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) stunned the establishment by finishing third and entering Parliament for the first time with 13.5 per cent of the vote.

Merkel, Europe’s longest serving leader, joins the late Helmut Kohl, her mentor who reunified Germany, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany’s rebirth after World War Two, as the only post-war chancellors to win four national elections.

SPD deputy leader Manuela Schwesig said her party would now go into opposition. That would rule out a re-run of Merkel’s existing alliance with the SPD.

An alternative coalition for Merkel would be a threeway tie-up with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the ecologist Greens. That is a combination as yet untested at national level and known as the “Jamaica” option because the three parties’ colors are those of the black-gold-green Jamaica national flag.