Merkel re-elected for fourth term
HUMBLING: CHANCELLOR GETS IN BY NARROW VOTE
‘It is a good start for Germany to have a stable government ... after so many months.’
German lawmakers voted yesterday to reelect Angela Merkel as chancellor for a fourth, and likely final, term that may prove her most challenging yet as she takes charge of a fragile coalition with her personal standing diminished.
Lawmakers voted by 364 to 315, with nine abstentions, in favour of re-electing Merkel, known at “Mutti”, or mother, a humbling start as the coalition of her conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) has 399 votes in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
“I accept the vote,” a beaming Merkel, 63, told lawmakers.
In office since 2005, she has dominated Germany’s political landscape and steered the European Union through economic crisis.
But her authority was dented by her decision in 2015 to commit Germany to an open-door policy on migration, resulting in an influx of more than 1 million people.
She must now juggle competing domestic demands from her conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the SPD, just as Germany is locked in a trade stand-off with the US.
“It is a good start for Germany to have a stable government ... after so many months, there is now a big incentive to get down to work with energy,” Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.
Merkel was due to meet President Frank-Walter Steinmeier before returning to the Bundestag to be sworn in.
Ministers will then be sworn in later in the day – almost six months after last September’s national election in which both coalition partners lost support to the far-right Alternative for Germany.
The conservative bloc only turned to the SPD to prolong the “grand coalition” that has governed Germany since 2013 out of desperation. – Reuters