Chancellor Angela Merkel’s\u00a0conservatives beat their rivals on Sunday to win her a fourth\u00a0term in an election that will also bring a far-right party into\u00a0Germany’s parliament for the first time in more than half a\u00a0century, exit polls indicate.<\/p>\n
After shock election results last year, such as\u00a0Britain’s vote\u00a0to leave the European Union and the election of U.S. President\u00a0Donald Trump, many look to Merkel to rally a bruised liberal\u00a0Western order, tasking her with leading a post-Brexit Europe.<\/p>\n
She must now form a coalition government \u2014\u00a0an arduous\u00a0process that could take months as all potential partners are\u00a0unsure whether they really want to share power with her.<\/p>\n
Merkel’s\u00a0conservative bloc won 32.5 per cent of the vote,\u00a0making them the largest parliamentary group, an exit poll for broadcaster ARD indicated. However, that was down from 41.5\u00a0per cent in the last election, in 2013.<\/p>\n
Support for their closest rivals, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) which are currently junior partners in a so-called grand coalition with Merkel, slumped to 20 per cent \u2014 a new post-war low. The SPD ruled out a rerun of that tie-up.<\/p>\n
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) stunned the\u00a0establishment by finishing third and entering parliament for the first time with 13.5 per cent of the vote.<\/p>\n
Merkel, Europe’s longest-serving leader, joins the late Helmut Kohl, her mentor who reunified Germany, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany’s rebirth after the Second World War, as the only post-war chancellors to win four national elections.<\/p>\n
Volker Kauder, parliamentary floor leader of Merkel’s\u00a0conservaties, told ARD television that his party reached its\u00a0goal to win the election. “We have the mandate to lead the next\u00a0government,” Kauder said.<\/p>\n
SPD Deputy Leader\u00a0Manuela\u00a0Schwesig\u00a0said her party would now\u00a0go into opposition. That would rule out a rerun of\u00a0Merkel’s\u00a0existing alliance with the SPD.<\/p>\n
\n ‘The fact that we took in more than one\u00a0million refugees in\u00a0our country is still dividing in our country’<\/span>
\n – Martin Schulz, leader of Social Democrats<\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\nMartin Schulz, SPD party leader and chancellor candidate, said this election was a “bitter day” for Germany’s Social Democrats, adding: “Especially depressing for all of us is the strength of the AfD, which for the first time brings a right-wing party into German parliament in such a strong position. This is a turning point.<\/p>\n
“The fact that we took in more than one\u00a0million refugees in\u00a0our country is still dividing in our country. What for some has \u00a0been an act of humanity and charity is to others menacing,\u00a0strange and filled with fear. We did not manage to persuade\u00a0all\u00a0of our voters that Germany is strong enough not to leave anyone\u00a0behind,” Schulz said.<\/p>\n
An alternative coalition for\u00a0Merkel\u00a0would be a three-way\u00a0tie-up with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the ecologist Greens. That is a combination as yet untested at national level\u00a0and known as the “Jamaica” option because the three parties’\u00a0colours are those of the black-gold-green Jamaica national flag.
\u00a0
Both the FDP and the environmentalist Greens have played\u00a0down the prospect of a Jamaica coalition, but as they have been\u00a0out of government for four and 12 years respectively, they may\u00a0be lured into an alliance by the prospect of power.<\/p>\nNew era with AfD<\/h2>\n
Whatever the makeup of her coalition,\u00a0Merkel, 63, faces\u00a0four years of government in a fragmented parliament after the\u00a0return of the FDP,\u00a0unrepresented at the\u00a0national level for the last \u00a0four years,\u00a0and the arrival of the AfD.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2013 by an anti-euro group of academics, the AfD has morphed into an anti-immigration party that has profited from Merkel’s 2015 decision to leave German borders open to over one million migrants, most of them fleeing war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
5 things to know about the German election<\/strong>2:06<\/p>\n
The party’s entry into the national parliament heralds the\u00a0beginning of a new era in German politics that will see more\u00a0robust debate and a departure from the steady, consensus-based\u00a0approach that has marked the post-war period.<\/p>\n
The other parties elected to the Bundestag all refuse to\u00a0work with the AfD, which says it will press for\u00a0Merkel\u00a0to be \u00a0“severely punished” for opening the\u00a0door to refugees and\u00a0migrants.<\/p>\n
After the AfD hurt her conservatives in regional elections\u00a0last year,\u00a0Merkel, a pastor’s daughter who grew up in communist\u00a0East Germany, wondered if she should run for re-election.<\/p>\n
But with the migrant issue under control this year, she\u00a0threw herself into a punishing campaign schedule, presenting\u00a0herself as an anchor of stability in an uncertain world.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/germany-election-2017-1.4304659?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s\u00a0conservatives beat their rivals on Sunday to win her a fourth\u00a0term in an election that will also bring a far-right party into\u00a0Germany’s parliament for the first time in more than half a\u00a0century, exit polls indicate. After shock election results last year, such as\u00a0Britain’s vote\u00a0to leave the European Union and the election of U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-92562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}