Time.news – “The mistake is mine, and mine alone. I apologize to all the Germans”. Angela Merkel makes one retreat in style on Easter ‘super-lockdown’ announced less than two days ago at the end of a monstrous summit lasting over 11 hours with the governors of the Laender. And he assumes full political responsibility: the idea of even stronger restrictive measures against Covid on public holidays – it would have been an unprecedented blackout of public life in Germany, even the supermarkets would have remained closed – “had been launched with the best of intentions and good reasons the mistake is mine and mine alone: in the end it is I who have the responsibility for everything, given my mandate. “For all this, adds the chancellor, addressing the press immediately after a new summit with the Laender called this morning by surprise and in a hurry, “I apologize to all German citizens“.
As she then reiterated to the Bundestag, where she submitted to the barrage of questions from the deputies, Merkel admitted “that the whole procedure has caused a further sense of uncertainty. And this I deeply regret”. The point is that simply “it was not possible to implement the measures decided in such a short time: there were too many questions left open, such as management for companies and shops. “A mistake, his, even more unfortunate in view of the fact that Germany is in the midst of a third wave of the coronavirus. the set of measures decided at the summit with the Laender even without the further Easter tightening “represent a good framework for measures in the fight against the pandemic.” The Chancellor says she is convinced: “Together we will win against the virus. The road is hard and full of stones, but the virus will lose its fright “.
In fact, the new extension of the lockdown in Germany – determined by an always very high contagion curve – had provoked an infinity of controversy, criticism and anger. Starting with the Catholic church and from the Gospel, strongly opposed to the request to celebrate Easter Masses online, passing through the economic categories, industrialists and territorial communities, and this without mentioning the attacks of the newspapers: from Bild to Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a choir against a plan “without strategy” and “without courage”, thanks to which “it is only the virus to thank”. A chorus which was also joined by the authoritative institute of economic studies Ifo, according to which “politics is limited to chasing the virus”. Not even many of the Laender governors themselves – who had also participated in the final vote on the Easter lockdown – did not evade the shooting contest against the chancellor. Certainly there is the fatigue of the Germans involved due to a lockdown that seems infinite (there have been three extensions from December to today), as well as the discontent due to the slowness of the vaccination campaign (to date only at 9, 54 out of 100 Germans were given at least one dose), plus the scandal over the sale of anti-Covid masks in which some CDU / CSU parliamentarians are involved, the Christian-democratic union of Frau Merkel: the The effect is that of a generalized climate of mistrust that contrasts with the very wide approval of the government and the chancellor’s work in the first phase of the pandemic and which is now dramatically reflected in the polls.
The polls foreshadow one ‘horror scenario’ for the Merkelian parties in view of the federal elections on September 26th, sanctioning today what is a real free fall. According to a survey by the Forsa institute against RTL / NTV, the two ‘brother’ parties CDU / CSU stop at just 26% of the votes. Just two months ago it was 36%, in May of last year – when the consensus for the management of the pandemic towards the chancellor was at its peak – it was even close to 40%. Compared to last week, the drop is 3 percentage points. It looks like the beginning of the abyss.
Above all, the liberals of the FDP, who grew by 2 points to 10%, and the Greens, who increased their consensus by 1 point to 22%, thus reducing their gap with respect to the block between Christian Democrats and Christian-Social Bavarians by only 4 points. The SPD remains firm at 16%, the AFD’s ultra-right does not go beyond 10% and Linke, the party of the left, is at 8%. A run-up by the Greens in the six months that separate Germany from the national vote is no longer unthinkable at this point. And from the point of view of possible government majorities, a so-called ‘traffic light’ coalition between the Greens, the SPD and the FDP takes hold, that is, which would exclude the CDU / CSU from the federal government: for the first time in 16 years, when Merkel entered first time as hostess in the chancellery. Obviously, the nerves are very tense, even in the Bundestag. Before the sensational Merkelian turnaround, even the faithful Armin Laschet, leader of the CDU and governor of North-Rhine Westphalia, asked for a change of pace on the related restrictive measures: “We cannot continue in this way”, he attacked. This is while the liberals of the FDP and the Linke, the party of the left, have come to ask the chancellor to ask for a vote of confidence.
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