Merkel vows to work for the ‘good of Germany’

German Chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Angela Merkel walks in to give a statement prior to a CDU leadership meeting at the CDU headquarters in Berlin on Monday. BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday (Monday in Manila) vowed to work with the Social - many” as the center- left party agreed to join her new coalition, but the veteran leader will go into her fourth term with weaker

Two in three of the SPD’s rank and file voting in a crunch referendum backed a new partnership with Merkel’s conservatives, heralding an end to the political stalemate that has plagued Europe’s biggest economy since September’s

But the chancellor, in power for 12 years, has had to pay a high price to coax the reluctant Social Democratic Party (SPD) back into

Congratulating the SPD for its - tion for the good of our country,” according to a tweet attributed to her

Stung by their worst post- war results, the SPD had initially ruled out another four years in

But after Merkel’s attempt to cobble together a government with two smaller parties failed,

With the party riven over the way forward, the leadership promised its more than 460,000 members

will be in the next government,” said SPD’s caretaker chairman Olaf Scholz, adding his party plans to send three male and three female

European partners waiting its longest stretch of coalition haggling since the end of the war heaved a sigh of relief, with French President Emmanuel Macron calling the SPD decision

the grand right- left coalition is Commission vice president Frans Timmermans wrote on Twitter: -

‘Criticisms’

Merkel is due to be re-elected by parliament as chancellor on March -

But the long-serving leader faces

A crushing majority enjoyed by her conservatives and the SPD in the last coalition has been trimmed to a slim 56 percent of seats (399 out of total 709) in

Both sides had been weakened as voters angry about the arrival of more than a million asylum seek to the far-right party Alternative for

The AfD, which would be the - many as the SPD joins the government, vowed to go after Merkel’s the immigration policy without

The party’s parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel pre

Wary of ceding further ground to the far-right Islamophobic out SPD have agreed to review their

Dissenting voices in the SPD also promise to keep the long-time

- sioned campaign against the planned coalition expressed disappointment at Sunday’s

then it will come from us,” he vowed, adding that young Social Democrats won’t rest until there

The tension within the party over its partnership with Merkel was illustrated by the silence that prevailed, prompting Spiegel On

Within the ranks too, Merkel, who once seemed invincible, is looking increasingly vulnerable as

Opponents of her liberal refugee policy have grown more outspoken, while the conservative wing of her party is seething at having lost ministry to the Social Democrats