Merkel’s successor has a tough task on her hands
Well that’s it then: Angela Merkel’s legacy is secure, said Oliver Georgi in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Back in October, after a series of painful defeats for her centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in regional elections, Germany’s four-time chancellor announced she was ceding the party leadership and would step down as chancellor when her term ends in 2021. And this month, the CDU elected Merkel’s favoured candidate, Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer – popularly known as AKK – to take over as party leader. It’s the best possible outcome for Merkel. Had the party chosen instead the millionaire lawyer Friedrich Merz, Merkel would likely have had to leave office early. A “polarising” Merkel critic who denounced the chancellor’s 2015 decision to welcome nearly a million asylum seekers to Germany, Merz had wanted to move the party to the right and win back voters from the nationalist Alternative for Germany party. Bad idea. The CDU hasn’t just shed voters to the far-right, but to the leftist Greens also. And those voters would never have returned to a party led by Merz. But thankfully, by a slim 52% majority, the CDU opted to continue big-tent centrism in the form of the “mini-merkel”, AKK. That means Merkel will get to manage her own exit and “won’t be unceremoniously hounded out of office”.
Yet AKK is no Merkel clone, said Ralf Neukirch in Der Spiegel (Hamburg). The two come from utterly different backgrounds. Mutti (or Mum), as Merkel is affectionately known, is a Lutheran pastor’s daughter, a Russian-speaking East German and a scientist who never had children. AKK is a Catholic mother of three and a career politician who speaks excellent French. She’s more emotional than her mentor and her instincts are more conservative. She opposes gay marriage “with a vehemence that is alien to Merkel”, and has said asylum seekers who commit crimes should be deported. That said, in her seven years as the first female premier of the western state of Saarland, AKK proved that she shares Merkel’s “calm, balanced style”, as well as her “iron nerves and sense of political timing”.
She’ll need all those to unite the CDU, said Stefan Braun in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich). AKK is popular among rank-and-file party members, but she’ll also have to be “clever and creative” to keep the prominent right-wingers who backed Merz on board. That means overcoming the CDU’S ingrained sexism, said Susanne Gaschke in Die Welt (Berlin). From the outset, certain elements felt a hatred for Merkel simply because a woman had vaulted above them. It was “frustrated masculinity” as much as anger over immigration that caused normally sober German politicians to join protesters’ chants of “Merkel must go”. Now another woman is taking over the CDU, which has the second-lowest proportion of female lawmakers among the major parties. Whether “loud, embittered males” will transfer their hatred of Merkel to her successor is “a crucial question” for her success – and her election as chancellor.