Angela Merkel and the beak of a parrot: an image that has gone viral | Germany votes next Sunday for Chancellor’s successor

48 hours before the elections which will mark the end of his era as Chancellor of Germany, Angela Markel left a smiley image that went viral. The Christian Democrat leader visited a bird park where she posed with parrots and shouted as she received a peck in the hand, a moment immortalized by a photograph.

This happened in the Land of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where he went in support of the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, in German). Merkel fed half a dozen rainbow parrots when one of the birds stung the chancellor, she could not restrain her cry.

Merkel will step down after the elections, the first to which she does not attend after her four victories in 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2017. The elections will close 16 years of Christian Democrat government led by the first woman to rule Germany.

The country is governed by the parliamentary system and it will be necessary to see if one of the candidates obtains the majority to form a government or it will be necessary to wait for coalitions between different forces. Social Democrat Olaf Scholz is the favorite in the polls. He is currently vice-chancellor of a coalition government led by Merkel. Armin Laschet is Merkel’s CDU candidate.

A toast before departure

“For Germany to remain stable, Armin Laschet must become Federal Chancellor,” said Merkel, drinking glasses with her party’s candidate in a Munich brewery. “The question of who governs in Germany is not trivial,” he added. Laschet appears with 23% of voting intention, behind of 25 that the latest polls give Scholz.

Further back appears the ecologist Annalena Baerbock; liberal Christian Lindner; leftists Dietmar Bartsch and Janine Wisler; and the far-right candidates, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel.

Merkel called for the conservative vote and warned of a possible government alliance of the Social Democrats with the left and the Greens. “We need a renewal for Germany. We need a change of government and we want a government led by the SPD, ”said Scholz, for his part, in a day when thousands of people took to the streets to demand action against global warming. The mobilization was promoted by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.