Merkel overshadows party ahead of September election
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday formally launches her campaign to win a fourth term in a September parliamentary election more likely to be decided on personality than policy.
Challenger Martin Schulz of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is leading his campaign with ‘more social justice’, promising reforms to tax, unemployment benefits and childcare after having just succeeded with a push to legalise same-sex marriage.
Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has so far failed to counter its opponents’ focused campaign with a unifying policy theme of its own.
Social media users last week mocked party secretary-general Peter Tauber’s slogan ‘For a Germany where we live well and gladly’, after he transformed the initial letters of the German phrase into an unpronounceable Twitter hashtag: #fedidwgugl.
Schulz, struggling to catch up with Merkel in the polls, last week shocked observers by accusing the chancellor of systematically refusing to debate him on the future of the country.
But the lacklustre CDU campaign does not appear to have hurt the re-election prospects of the veteran leader dubbed ‘Mutti’ (Mummy) by German voters.
After a brief spell between January and March when Schulz, a newcomer on the German political landscape, surged into the lead, the former European Parliament president has fallen far behind Merkel as the preferred candidate in polls by public broadcaster ARD.
Rallying around a trusted leader is a long tradition for the CDU, whose simple ‘No experiments!’ campaign posters for Konrad Adenauer’s re-election in 1957 remain a touchstone of German political culture.
Merkel’s mentor, recentlydeceased former chancellor Helmut Kohl, was accused of transforming the CDU into a “chancellor electing society” during his 16-year reign.
And Merkel herself echoed the strong-leader theme in 2013, with gigantic posters featuring her fingers clasped and the slogan ‘Germany in good hands’.
Merkel’s government faced heavy pressure in 2015 when it opened the nation’s borders to a mass influx of refugees, sparking a xenophobic backlash.
But as the arrivals have slowed sharply, the issue has faded from public debate, as the upstart antiimmigration Alternative for Germany party slipped back into single digits in the polls. — AFP