Merkel wins fourth term, hard right gains foothold in Parliament
BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel has clinched a fourth term in Germany’s election, but her victory was clouded by the hard-right 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 a post-war record low 20-21 percent.
But in a bombshell for the German establishment, the antiimmigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) captured around 13 percent, making it the country’s third biggest political force.
While the likelihood of the AfD winning seats was clear for months, commentators called its strong showing a “watershed moment” in the history of the German republic.
Supporters gathered at the party headquarters in Berlin cried out with joy as public television reported the outcome, many joining in a chorus of the German national anthem.
The four-year-old nationalist party with links to the far-right French National Front and Britain’s UKIP has been shunned by Germany’s mainstream.
It is now headed for the opposition benches of the Bundestag lower house, dramatically boosting its visibility and state financing.
Germans elected a splintered Parliament reflecting an electorate torn between a high degree of satisfaction with Merkel and a desire for change after more than a decade of her leadership.
Another three parties cleared the five-percent hurdle to be represented in Parliament: The liberal Free Democrats at around 10 percent and the anti-capitalist Left and ecologist Greens, both at about 9 percent.
As Merkel failed to secure a ruling majority on her own and with the dejected SPD ruling out another right-left “grand coalition” with her, the process of coalition building was shaping up to be a thorny, potentially months-long process.
Merkel, 63, whose campaign events were regularly disrupted by jeering AfD supporters, said in her final stump speech in the southern city of Munich that “the future of Germany will definitely not be built with whistles and hollers.”
Merkel, often called the most powerful woman on the global stage, ran on her record as a steady pair of hands in a turbulent world, warning voters not to indulge in “experiments.”