End of Merkel era looms over far-right party

AfD facing turbulence as declared nemesis set to step down in 2021

BERLIN: A year after it entered Germany’s parliament, the far-right AfD party is facing turbulence, including a donations scandal and the looming departure of its favourite enemy Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The troubles have come thick and fast since the five-year-old Alternative for Germany reached a key goal in October by entering the last of the country’s 16 state assemblies, winning 13% in the region of Hesse.

A relative newcomer feared and loathed by the bigger mainstream parties, the AfD has however now stagnated at around 15% in the polls while another party, the left-leaning Greens, has booked a series of stunning successes.

Billing themselves as “the alternative to the Alternative” with a clear stance against the AfD’s anti-immigration message, the Greens are now polling at around 20%, making them the second-strongest party after Merkel’s CDU-CSU bloc.

The AfD, meanwhile, have faced charges of accepting illegal campaign funds from a non-EU donor, in Switzerland – an especially damaging charge for a party that accuses all the “establishment parties” of being dishonest and corrupt.

Co-leader Alice Weidel has been under fire after media reports said

� her party chapter received 130,000 (RM615,000) from a Swiss entrepreneur.

While she has rejected wrong-doing and said the money was returned, German prosecutors in mid-November asked parliament to lift Weidel’s immunity as they stepped up their enquiries.

A more fundamental, long-term problem may be that the AfD’s declared nemesis, Merkel, has rung in the beginning of the end of her chancellorship after 13 years in power.

Weakened by several election setbacks for her CDU, she has declined to stand again for the leadership of the party at a December congress and declared she will leave politics when her term ends in 2021.