Merkel should have lifted quarantine at Easter and apologized

There are elections in September, for the first time in many years without Merkel on the list, and her party, the Christian Democrat CDU, falls at the polls due to the pandemic.

“An error must be qualified as an error and it must be corrected”, Said Merkel. He was she who urged regional leaders to decree a severe Easter stop, at the time meeting of nearly 12 hours from last Monday to Tuesday, which resulted in a press conference after three in the morning.

For many observers, this was another demonstration of the waste of energy and political capital used in Germany in lengthy discussions about supermarket hours and contact rules, while the testing strategy and immunization planning is dramatically behind schedule.

Anger grows in Germany over prolonged shutdown of non-essential commerce, culture and entertainment, Y The exasperation at the slowness of the vaccination campaign is increasing, it is therefore likely that the measurements for five days in April were the last straw. Its actual hardness can be considered relative.

The canceled rule made it necessary to close Thursday 1 and Saturday 3 even some grocery stores, but not all, as well as the few stores authorized to sell by appointment., the usual two Easter shopping days; and this scandalized the merchants and the Germans in general. Moreover, the canceled rule It included special restrictions from April 1-5, including the closure of some food businesses. Nothing extreme, as we see, but it was too much for a tired and exasperated society.

In addition, Maundy Thursday, which is a working day in Germany, has become a public holiday with the no-work rule, which has alarmed businesses. AND Churches were required to celebrate Easter services online, with what many bishops were angry. Travel for tourism between regions has not been possible for months and people have been urged to stay at home.

Canceling plan and Merkel’s request for forgiveness part of her party’s drop in polls, the Christian Democrat CDU, six months before the general election, in which she will not participate. The CDU, punished for its ineffective management of the pandemic by the government, was defeated this month in two regional elections.

The conservative bloc (CDU and its partner, the Bavarian Christian-Socialist CSU) – which in the 2017 elections won 33% of the vote, and at the start of this year they were around 36% in the polls – it fell below 30%. This Wednesday an investigation on Forsa gave them 26% and the Greens 22%, with a distribution among the rest of the parties that attracts the arithmetic possibility of a government without conservatives. The panic spreads through the CDU / CSU, which has yet to agree on its candidate for chancellor among their respective leaders, Armin Laschet and Markus Söder.

The tactical component of Merkel’s call for forgiveness it was at the same time, just before a routine appearance in Parliament or the Bundestag where heavy fire was expected. In front of the deputies, Merkel reiterated her apologies and assured that she had the full support of her coalition government.n Conservatives and Social Democrats, while in the opposition, voices were raised asking him to submit to a question of confidence.