18-year-old Merkel as the leader of the most powerful party in Germany ends. Looking this morning at the sad results of the elections in Hesse, she made a fateful decision. Even a few.
"Firstly, at the next December party congress of the CDU in Hamburg I will not stand for the post of party chairman. Secondly, the current 4th term as the German chancellor will be the last. In 2021 I will not run for this post “I do not pretend to any other political posts either,” Merkel said.
Once upon a time, before climbing to the top of power, Merkel said that her biggest nightmare was to become a political ruin. Now she is making final efforts to avoid this fate. Her life in politics, quite comfortable and safe until August 2015, changed abruptly when she said her famous "We can handle", which opened the doors of Germany and Europe for refugees.
Since then, she only had to endure, moving along the road of disappointment from one electoral catastrophe to another, and to feel that with each new defeat she is increasingly turning into a burden for her own party. With heavy losses, she was able to survive the federal election last year, and even form a government, thanks to the coherence of the Social Democrats. But all this against the backdrop of a growing chorus of voices - “Merkel must leave,” which began to be heard not only from the opposition camp. Sunday's failure in Hesse was a signal that further resistance was useless.
"The results of the Christian Democrats in Hesse were disappointing and bitter. There is no doubt that our friends in Hesse would have achieved higher ratings if not for the influence of federal politics," the head of the German government admitted.
The CDU won 27% of the vote, losing 11.3% in relation to its past result.
Former voters of Merkel, those who are dissatisfied with her migration policy, fled to the far-right "Alternative for Germany", which for the first time broke into the Hessian Lantag with the result of more than 13%, covering all German state parliaments with its presence.
“The mission has been accomplished. Now we can determine the political course and we will do it,” said Jörg Moiten, leader of the Alternative for Germany party.
The Social Democrats - Merkel's junior partners in the central government, who were previously stably the second party in the land, as well as the CDU, lost a third of voters - they went to the more radical: "green" socialists.
Two weeks ago, historically the weakest result in Bavaria, now in Hesse, which clearly identified the problems of the entire federal coalition - rapid soil erosion under the two largest parties in the country - the CDU and the SPD, which disappears to the right and left.
This threatens to riot the lower ranks of the party, who will vote for or against their current leaders at congresses at the end of the year. Merkel decided not to trust her fate to other people's voices - to do everything of her own accord. The newspapers write that her decision to save the face of the CDU presidium was applauded.
The resignation of Merkel from the party post does not mean that she will automatically leave the position of chancellor. Merkel is ready to modify until the autumn of 2021. You just have to hold on.
The fact that Merkel limited her stay in politics to the current parliamentary cycle is clearly connected with the desire to reduce the degree of irritation against herself, her government and her party, which will go further in a regime that is much more free from the complicated political aura of the Chancellor.
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