With 48 hours until the elections that will mark the end of his era as Chancellor of Germany, Angela Markel left a smiling image that went viral. The Christian Democrat leader visited a bird park where she posed with some parrots and gave a shout as she received a peck in the hand, a moment that was immortalized in a photograph.
It happened in the state 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 suppress her cry.
Merkel will leave office 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 the Christian Democratic government led by the first woman to govern Germany.
The country is governed by the parliamentary system and it will be necessary to see if any of the candidates achieves a majority to form a government or it will be necessary to wait for coalitions between different forces. The Social Democrat Olaf Scholz appears as a favorite in the polls. He is currently vice chancellor in a coalition government headed by Merkel. Armin Laschet is Merkel’s CDU candidate.
A toast before departure
“For Germany to remain stable, Armin Laschet must become the federal chancellor,” said Merkel, toasting with her party’s candidate at a Munich beer hall. “The question of who governs in Germany is not trivial,” he added. Laschet appears with 23 percent voting intention, behind of the 25 that the latest polls give Scholz.
Further back appear the ecologist Annalena Baerbock; the liberal Christian Lindner; the leftists Dietmar Bartsch and Janine Wisler; and the candidates of the extreme right, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel.
Merkel has appealed to the conservative vote and warned about 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 in which thousands of people took to the streets to demand actions against global warming. The mobilization was promoted by the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
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