After 16 years in power with “stainless” popularity and after a poorly prepared succession, Angela Merkel is finally preparing to leave the head of government, leaving a great void in Germany and in the world despite her legacy of chiaroscuro.
Merkel, who equaled the longevity record in the Chancellery of her mentor Helmut Kohl, runs the risk of retiring from politics with a historic defeat of your party conservative.
Having long believed that victory was guaranteed, Christian Democrats find themselves punished by the wear and tear of a decade and a half in power.
Also because of the mistakes of his candidate – the unpopular Armin Laschet – as well as Merkel’s negligence to pass the witness.
Merkel with the candidate of her party, CDU, Armin Laschet, this Saturday, in the last campaign act in Aachen, Germany. Photo: AP
Mobilized on all fronts, both in Germany and abroad, where she multiplies the farewell visits, the 67-year-old leader tried to straighten the boat by showing herself in the electoral campaign with Laschet.
But according to polls. so far it was in vain.
Merkel retains, however, a popularity that many Western leaders would envy.
The year 2019 seems to have been long gone, when the chancellor, at the head of a great coalition of the right and the left exhausted, gave the impression of being overwhelmed by the mobilization of young people in defense of the environment and against climate change.
As a symbol of the twilight of her government, uncontrollable tremors hit Merkel during official ceremonies and raised questions about the ability of this “almost indefatigable” leader to complete her fourth and final term.
In 2019, uncontrollable tremors during a public event worried Germany and the world. Photo: AFP
Popularity in pandemic
But the coronavirus pandemic came and boosted his popularity. Three-quarters of Germans say they are satisfied with their action at the head of the country, according to polls.
Voices were even heard during the pandemic calling for a fifth term, but the first woman to lead Germany ruled it out outright.
Angela Merkel was a strong advocate for quarantines and strong measures to slow the advance of the coronavirus. Photo: EFE
This scientist by training carried out an almost flawless management of covid-19 and knew how to communicate, pedagogically and in a rational way, to face the “greatest challenge”, according to her, since the Second World War.
The confinement, which reminded him of his life in the former GDR (Democratic Republic of Germany, communist), constituted, in his opinion, “one of the most difficult decisions” in his 16 years in power.
Germany was less dramatic than much of its European neighbors, despite a deadly second wave in the fall of 2020.
The hit to the economy
The pandemic and its dramatic economic and social consequences They have also allowed “Mutti” (“mom”), as many Germans affectionately call her, to adapt to the crisis by changing paradigms.
This fervent defender of European austerity After the financial crisis of 2008, despite the suffocation of Greece, it promoted increased spending and the mutualisation of debt, the only thing, according to her, that could save the European project.
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan had quickly convinced her to initiate the progressive abandonment of nuclear power in Germany.
The refugee crisis
But his more daring political bet He did it in the fall of 2015, when he decided to open the doors to hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers.
Despite public opinion fears, he promised to integrate and protect them. “We will achieve it!”, he assured. It is perhaps the most surprising phrase uttered by Merkel, quite reluctant to passionate speeches.
An immigrant takes a selfie with Angela Merkel at the entrance to a refugee camp near the Federal Office for Migration in Berlin in September 2015. Photo: REUTERS
Until then, this doctor in Chemistry who continues to carry the surname of her first husband and does not have children had cultivated an image of a prudent and even cold woman, without edges, who adores potatoes, opera and hiking.
To explain his historic decision on migrants, taken without actually consulting his European partners, he invoked his “Christian values” and a certain obligation of exemplarity of a country that carries the stigma of the Holocaust.
The shepherd’s daughter
This Christian charity of Angela Kasner, her maiden name, comes from her father, an austere pastor who voluntarily went to live with his entire family in communist and atheist East Germany to preach.
“My heritage has marked me, especially the desire for freedom during my life in the GDR,” he said on the 30th anniversary of Reunification.
But fear of Islam and the attacks led part of the conservative electorate to take refuge in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which in September 2017 reached Parliament, thus breaking a post-war taboo.
Angela Merkel talks to then-US President Barack Obama in the gardens of Elmau Castle, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany, where the G7 summit was held in June 2015. Photo: AFP
However, after the Donald Trump earthquake and Brexit, Merkel, who always assumed her decision on refugees, was enthroned by the press and many politicians as the “leader of the free world” in the face of the rise of populism.
Barack Obama, one of the four US presidents Merkel has known since 2005, describes her in his memoirs as a “reliable, honest, intellectually accurate” leader and a “beautiful person.”
The “Teflon Chancellor”, who seems immune from trouble, is a political animal as particular as it is fearsome, and many of her adversaries underestimated her.
In 2000, he benefited from a financial scandal in his party to take over the reins of the CDU, overtaking the entire male hierarchy.
On September 18, 2005, the Social Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, was imposed by the minimum in the elections. This first victory was followed by three others, in 2009, 2013 and 2017.
On May 20, she affirmed that she was retiring from politics with only one ambition: not to say that she has been “lazy.”
Source: AFP
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