Poll victory frees Merkel from an uneasy coalition
Delighted supporters of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party celebrate after first exit polls in the German general election (Bundestagswahl) at the party headquarters in Berlin yesterday
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Monday September 28 2009
ANGELA Merkel scored a resounding victory yesterday in German elections that will enable her to leave her coalition partners behind after they suffered their worst parliamentary result since the Second World War.
The chancellor was seeking to end her uneasy four-year-old "grand coalition" with the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD) of challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier and form a government with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) instead.
"There is no talking around it, this is a bitter defeat," Mr Steinmeier said as he conceded after projected results showed a wide margin of victory for Ms Merkel.
"We have achieved something great," Ms Merkel told supporters. "We have managed to achieve our election aim of a stable majority in Germany for a new government." Together with the FDP, Ms Merkel is expected to push for an era of deeper economic reforms and tax cuts for Europe's biggest economy.
Her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the FDP benefited from dissatisfaction over spiralling national debt and stagnant income levels. Ms Merkel has said she will hold "swift and decisive" coalition talks with Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the Free Democrats, who has been widely tipped as Germany's next foreign minister.
According to exit polls, the CDU has retained its position as Germany's largest party, with 33.5pc of the vote, while the Free Democrats jumped to 15pc. Germany's Social Democratic Party suffered a humiliating blow, taking just 22.5pc.
Predictions of a close result were confounded by frustrated voters embracing Ms Merkel's case for a stronger hand to deal with Germany's long-term financial problems.
Tough
"We need to deal in a new way with the problem of long-term unemployment and the fact that people need to have more money in their pockets," said Stefan Muller, a voter who has been unemployed for two years. "It was a tough choice but something has to happen."
When counting is finished, a comfortable combined majority well above 300 seats for the conservatives would grant Ms Merkel the opportunity to take a more radical stance on pressing problems.
But the Left will still be able to frustrate the most controversial aspects of the programme as the parties will not have a majority in the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat.
Celebrations obscured the fact that Ms Merkel's party lost support in the election. Its votes dropped by nearly two percentage points from 2005, which should put the Free Democrats in a much stronger position to enforce their agenda. Traditionally, the junior partners in German governments have only had a marginal impact on policy.
The result comes as Germany is beginning to emerge from recession. The vote took place against a backdrop of heightened security after al-Qa'ida issued videos threatening to punish Germany if voters backed a government that kept its troops in Afghanistan.
All the main parties, except the far-Left Linke Party, support the deployment. (©Daily Telegraph, London)
- Damien McElroy and David Wroe in Berlin
