Merkel vows to restore trust after Bavaria election losses
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Monday to restore trust in her government after her conservative allies suffered heavy losses in a regional election, which their far-right foes hailed as “an earthquake” that would rock the ruling coalition.
The Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Merkel’s own Christian Democrats (CDU), slumped to its worst result in almost 70 years in Sunday’s election in Bavaria. The chancellor’s other coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), saw its support halved.
“My lesson from this is that I, as chancellor, must make sure that trust is won back. I will work on that with as much vigour as I can,” she said at an event of the BGA trade body. CSU leader Horst Seehofer, who is also interior minister in Merkel’s loveless coalition, had hoped his anti-immigration rhetoric and criticism of Merkel’s liberal asylum policies would help his party fend off a threat from the far-right in Bavaria.
His strategy backfired as the CSU, which has ruled Bavaria for almost six decades, bled votes to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the ecologist Greens in equal measure.
On Monday, he appeared to extend an olive branch. “We will do our bit to ensure that the coalition can continue to do its work in a stable manner despite some of the comments that were made yesterday,” Seehofer told reporters.
He was referring to angry CSU delegates who blamed their party’s dismal showing on Merkel’s decision in 2015 to welcome some one million, mainly Muslim, asylum seekers, which has fuelled the rise of the AfD.