MERKEL UNDER SIEGE. FISHER.
Policy key issue in German state elections
O n lyon eye ar ago Angela Merkel’s supremacy at home was unchallenged.
Since then, Germany’ s long-standing political arrangements have been ripped apart by the arrival of more than one million refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East and South Asia.
At the centre of the storm is the usually sure-footed chancellor. Merkel has been blamed for tearing Germany’s cultural fabric with her open-entry policy for asylum- seekers fleeing Syria.
In this weekend’ s three regional elections, she faces what could be her most serious reckoning since winning the chancellorship in 2005.
Two weeks ago, the farright Alternative Fuer Deutschland ( AFD), whose campaign slogan is “Stop the Immigration Chaos,” placed third in municipal elections in the state of Hesse. The AFD, which did not exist three years ago, received 13.2 per cent of the vote, or nearly half as many votes as Merkel’s centre- right Christian Democratic Union ( CDU).
Hesse may be what t he Germans call a Vorspeise, or appetizer. Another 12.6 million voters go to the polls on the weekend in what some commentators regard as a referendum on Merkel’s immigration policies.
If pollsters are correct, the AFD will triple its support from only a few months ago in Baden- Wuerttenberg, largely because some traditional CDU supporters have moved to the right. But the party could gain from a collapse in support for the Social Democrats( the SPD) and the Greens.
The AFD should also easily pass the threshold required to elect candidates to the state parliament in nearby Rhineland-Pa latinate, while in hardscrabble Saxony- Anhalt in what was East Germany, it is likely to get 20 per cent.
Stating the obvious, Merkel acknowledged recently, “Many people around t he country are unhappy and may think now is the time to teach the government a lesson.”
But as the eternal pragmatist has done before to save herself, the German chancellor has executed a 180- degree shift on refugees since the fall. She has been the main force behind the European Union’s offer of six billion euros ($ 8.85 billion) to Turkey.
In return, Turkey will take in people whose asylum claims have been rejected by EU countries. In an odd “one in, one out” agreement, the EU will accept a Syrian refugee now in Turkey for every one returned — relocating them in a quota system few EU countries want any part of.
The tentative cure could turnout to be politically dangerous for Merkel. The deal includes visa- free travel to the EU for Turkey’s 75 mill i on Muslims and accelerated talks on membership in the bloc that would give them the right to work anywhere in the union.
Meanwhile, the refugees and immigrants keep on coming, pi ling upon the Serbian and Macedonian borders and in the Greek isles because of the EU’s Merkel- led decision to close borders that until now have been sieves.
The shocks caused by the refugee crisis in Germany and the burning of asylumseekers’ homes there have reawakened fears the country might somehow lap se back into the violence and xenophobia that led to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Nationalism on such a ghastly scale is still a very, very long way off, but there have been dark hints that the unthinkable may no longer be so unthinkable.
Conjuring up unwanted memories of mass executions during the Nazi era and the routine shooting by East German border guards of those trying to flee East Berlin during the Soviet era,
NOTHING HAS BEEN CERTAIN IN GERMAN POLITICS SINCE THE REFUGEE CRISIS BEGAN.
the AFD’s populist leader, Frauke Petr y recently told the Baden-Wuerttenberg daily, Mannheimer Morgen, police should use “firearms if necessary” to prevent refugees and economic migrants from entering Germany.
Her remarks followed a series of large anti- immigrant protest sand far more extreme language from leaders.
Although the AFD will do well in Saxony-An halt, the CDU will still place first there on Sunday and Merkel remains unassailable for the moment on the national scene. While she has lost the support of many in her party because of her generous welcome for the refugees, that stance may win some support from the left.
German media have been speculating for months that Merkel is in trouble. Reportedly, potential CDU rivals, such as Julia Kloeckner, have been calculating whether they can depose her before national elections next year.
If all this sounds confusing, it is. Nothing has been certain in German politics since the refugee crisis began last summer, including Merkel’ s continuing mastery of the political landscape.