Merkel vows to ‘win back trust’ after Bavaria poll debacle
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Monday to “win back trust” from voters after squabbling within her three-party coalition was blamed for severe election losses in the state of Bavaria.
Looking back at a turbulent year since 2017 general elections, which saw painful coalition talks followed by harsh infighting on immigration, she conceded that “a lot of trust has been lost”.
Her lesson from Sunday’s Bavaria polls, where her governing partners the CSU and the SPD suffered heavy losses, was that “I as the chancellor must do more to ensure that this trust is there”.
Her own Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the CSU “can be expected to act in a united way,” she said, pointing to her deep rift with the CSU’S hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
The governing parties were in shellshock after Sunday’s regional election, where the CSU took a 10-point dive to 37 per cent, losing its absolute majority in the Alpine state it has ruled since the 1960s.
Merkel’s other national coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), dropped to 9.7 per cent, halving their support in their worst-ever result in any state poll.
The biggest winners on Sunday were the opposition Greens, who surged to become Bavaria’s second strongest party with 17.5 per cent, drawing support especially in big cities like Munich. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD), which has railed against Merkel’s 2015 decision to keep open German borders to a mass influx of refugees and migrants, scored 10 per cent.
Their success was cheered by rightwing leaders including Marine Le Pen of France and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, who said that “in Bavaria, change has won”. The Afd’s Alice Weidel jubilantly declared that Merkel’s government “is not a grand coalition but a mini coalition” and demanded she “clear the way for new elections”.
The poll debacle cast a dark cloud over Merkel’s troubled grand coalition, dubbed the “Groko”, said Der Spiegel.
“The Bavaria election has made an early end to the Groko much more likely,” it said.
“Two of three partners in the Groko have suffered brutal losses. The third, Angela Merkel’s CDU, fears the consequences.”
The Bavaria poll result shattered old certainties for the CSU, which has ruled almost single-handedly for decades in the southern state known for its fairytale castles, Oktoberfest and crucifixes on classroom walls.
Since the mass migrant arrivals, in which Bavaria was Germany’s frontline state, the CSU has adopted far tougher anti-immigration and law and order positions.
Nonetheless, they and other big parties took heavy losses in 2017 federal elections to the AFD, which became the first right-wing extremist party to enter the German parliament in significant numbers.