‘Eternal chancellor’ leaves her mark on politics
Berlin – She was called “the leader of the free world” as authoritarian populists were on the march in Europe and the United States, but Angela Merkel is wrapping up a historic 16 years in power with an uncertain legacy at home and abroad.
In office so long she was dubbed Germany’s “eternal chancellor”, Merkel, 67, leaves with her popularity so resilient she would likely have won a record fifth term had she sought it.
Instead, Merkel will pass the baton as the first German chancellor to step down entirely by choice, with a whole generation of voters never knowing another person at the top.
Her supporters say she provided steady, pragmatic leadership through countless global crises as a moderate and unifying figure.
Yet critics argue a muddle-through style of leadership, pegged to the broadest possible consensus, lacked the bold vision to prepare Europe and its top economy for the coming decades.
The unflappable Merkel has served for many in recent years as a welcome counterbalance to the big, brash men of global politics, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.
A Pew Research Center poll this week showed large majorities in most democracies around the globe having “confidence in Merkel to do the right thing in world affairs”.
However, the last days of her tenure have also been marred by what Merkel called the “bitter, dramatic and terrible” return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan – a debacle in which she shares the blame as Germany completed its evacuation.
A trained quantum chemist raised behind the Iron Curtain, Merkel has long been in sync with her changeaverse electorate as a guarantor of stability.
Her major policy shifts reflected the wishes of large German majorities – among them phasing out nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster – and attracted a new coalition of women and urban voters to the once arch-conservative CDU.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, her boldest move – keeping open German borders in 2015 to more than one million asylum seekers – seemed set to determine her legacy.
But while many Germans rallied to Merkel’s “We can do it” cry, the move also emboldened an anti-migrant party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), ushering a farright bloc into parliament for the first time since World War II.
Hardline leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban accused her of “moral imperialism” with her welcoming stance.
Six years on, she lamented this month, the European Union appears no closer to a unified policy on migration.
The woman once known as the “climate chancellor” for pushing renewables also faces a mass movement of activists arguing she has failed to face up to the climate emergency, with Germany not even meeting its own emissions reduction commitments.
Protesters dubbed her Europe’s “austerity queen” and caricatured her in Nazi garb, while defenders credit her with holding the currency union together.
More recently, despite admitted missteps in the coronavirus pandemic including a sluggish vaccine roll-out, Germany’s death toll has remained lower than those of many European partners relative to population. –
Taliban return to power in Afghanistan bitter, dramatic and terrible