Merkel marches on
Another convincing electoral performance by the German chancellor leaves observers wondering who can take over once she’s gone.
SO Angie Merkel is rocking it in Germany. On Sunday she won a third consecutive term as Chancellor and looks set to cement her place alongside Conrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl as one of the all-time greats, from the conservative perspective of course.
I must admit I think it is unusual that Merkel’s performance has been declared such a thumping victory when her junior coalition ally, the Free Democratic Party, lost all its seats in parliament, effectively giving her coalition a reduced majority.
In fact, if the three other parties — the centre-left Social Democrats (SDP), the left-leaning Greens and the leftist party known as the Left Party — teamed up, Merkel could be toppled.
Despite these parties running some state governments in coalition together, it doesn’t seem a real possibility though, and it is perhaps a worrying indictment of German social democracy that the once-great SDP is more willing to play a subservient role in a grand coalition than to fight back against conservative rule.
That brings us back to the glorious triumph of Angela Merkel. She has delivered the victory so desperately wanted by the global business community.
The German economy is literally quite central to the great European experiment and Merkel has spent the last eight years doing most of the right things in difficult circumstances.
In fact, her personal popularity is at an alltime high and largely credited for the thumping performance of her Christian Democrat party. The sight of tens of thousands of Germans celebrating with cries of “Angie! Angie!” is a far cry from the days when she was seen as gaffe-prone and dowdy.
But what next? What happens when the world’s most powerful woman eventually decides to take a bow?
The one problem with a personality starting to dominate a party is that it has a lot of ground to regain once said personality steps down.
Merkel will be 60 next year and clearly has the fuel to keep going but one day they’ll have to start looking.
Actually I found there are lots of women within her own party. Merkel’s first cabinet post in 1991 was that of Federal Minister for Women and Youth and it seems to be quite a launching pad.
Her immediate successor in 1994 was the precocious Claudia Nolte.
Nolte was Germany’s youngest minister, aged just 28 when she was appointed by Kohl, but her star burned a little too bright a little too soon. She was voted out in 1998 and after a couple more electoral disappointments, drifted out of the political scene.
Two more successors in the ministry, now renamed the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, would appear to have a lot more staying power.
The aristocratic Ursula Von der Leyen enjoyed a successful term before moving on to the difficult Labour Ministry.
A physician with seven children, Von der Leyen has also gained fame for her battle against pornography and is likely to be a name to watch.
The current women’s minister is Kristina Shroeder, who, at 36, has even more time on her side. The first German cabinet minister to give birth while in office, Shroeder is ideally suited to being a new generation’s conservative poster girl.
It’s not just the conservatives who have powerful lady leaders though. Both the Greens and the Left entered the election with a dual male/female combo leading the party.
The Greens’ Katrin Göring-Eckardt is perhaps less overpowering a personality than some of the other women in what is the most powerful green party in the world.
Co-chairwoman Claudia Roth and Renate Kunast are other strong characters who have led the party but the Greens have come into a sort of comfort zone where they get 8-10% of the vote and have to actually make the choice between allowing centre-right dominance and allying themselves with the SPD and more controversially the Left party on a national level.
As for the left, it too is in danger of developing a holding pattern with roughly the same size of electoral support (in fact the Left has 64 seats and the Greens have 63!)
Leaders like Katja Kipping and Sahra Wagenknecht, who has a far-left background and controversially took up with former SPD leader Oskar Lafointaine, have established a vital space in the country’s political discourse and it will be exciting to see more of what the Left can do.
Ultimately though, power will remain in the hands of the imperious Ms Merkel for quite some time more. Perhaps next time round the earth will shake. > Star Online news editor Martin Vengadesan has dropped oranges into the Rhine and tripped over some bricks that were the Berlin Wall. The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.