Two tough defeats for her coalition cloud the start of Angela Merkel’s dismissal from power

PARIS.- German Conservatives led by Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a historic setback today in two regional votes, considered real tests for the federal legislative elections next September.

Fragile by errors in the management of the pandemic and a complicated financial scandal, Last night, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) headed for its worst election result in the regional states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, in the southwest of the country. The Chancellor’s party would not get more than 23.3% of the vote in the first country, against 27% five years ago. In the second, it would reach 23.3% against 31.8% in 2016.

“Dark hours” for the CDU, he titled the newspaper Die Welt, while the weekly Der Spiegel evoked a “Electoral disaster”.

It is true that the conservatives were not the favorites of these two landers led respectively by the Greens and the Social Democrats of the SPD. But This very bad result represents a very bad omen for the legislatures of September 26. The wave of revelations surrounding the so-called “jugular scandal” and growing criticism of the handling of the health crisis have significantly weakened Merkel’s party.

“The CDU is going through its worst crisis” since the black box scandal that brought down former Chancellor Helmut Khol in the late 1990s, estimated Jean-Dominique Juliani, President of the Robert Schuman Foundation.

This time, it is mainly suspicion of commissions received at the start of the epidemic by party deputies for contracts to purchase chinstrap, which obscures the image of the government majority.

“This scandal weighed heavily on today’s results”, recognized last night the CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak, which promised “zero tolerance” for the hijacking of those “who get rich during the crisis”.

On the contrary, the Greens, who hope to enter the federal government in the next legislative elections, congratulated themselves on the “super start” of the electoral sequence – which will include the renewal of six regional governments – marked by a large victory for the country of Baden-Württemberg (probably 31% of the vote), which they have been leading for a decade. In this prosperous region, at the heart of the automotive industry, the popular environmentalist Winfried Kretschann (72) is winning more and more points.

The coalition with the CDU who has been running Kretschann for five years it is seen as the laboratory of a possible national alliance between the two parties after the federal elections. Today’s large victory allows them to negotiate a new regional alliance either again with the CDU, with the Social Democrats or with the liberals of the FPD, who would have obtained around 11%. And even think of a formula that includes three parties.

In the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate, the CDU remained far behind the outgoing leader, the leader of local social democracy, Malu Dreyer (between 33% and 35%).

The pandemic also does not appear to have benefited the far right of Alternative for Germany (AfD), which fell more than 4% in both landers..

These results undoubtedly represent a great disappointment for the German Chancellor. After 16 years in power and popular confidence intact –Despite some temporary obstacles– Angela Merkel hoped to leave a strong party to face the next election. After leading the polls a year ago with 40% favorable opinions, the CDU and its Bavarian ally, the CSU, recently fell to 33% of voting intentions, the level they had before the pandemic.

Two of your assistants, Georg Nüsslein (CSU) and Nikolas Löbel (CDU), had to leave their respective parties, suspected of having enriched themselves thanks to the epidemic, acting as an intermediary with the manufacturers in the official purchase of anti-Covid chin straps. Another Tory MP resigned Thursday after being criticized for posting ads from Azerbaijan – a country rich in oil and caviar, but far from a model of respect for human rights – in a national newspaper that he directs himself.

This defeat weighs heavily on Armin Laschet’s ambitions, recently elected at the head of the CDU, that he must convince his affiliates that he is the best Conservative candidate for the chancellery. For the time being, The Bavarian leader of the CSU, Markus Söder, surpasses him in the polls. Asked at the end of February by the Kantar Institute, 50% of those polled considered him the best candidate to replace Merkel, against 24% in favor of Laschet.

The “mask scandal” hangs over millions of Germans, who a year after the start of the pandemic are tired of the restrictions and increasingly doubt the strategy chosen by the government.

The difficulties of supplying vaccines against Covid-19, which plagues not only Germany but the whole of the European Union (EU), added to the recent increase in contamination caused by new variants of the virus, accentuate the dissatisfaction. At the same time, health authorities are no longer hiding their concern about what they consider to be “the start of a third wave” of the pandemic.

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