Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, under siege domestically and widely seen as a pillar of Western liberalism, will stand for a fourth term next year, German news media said on Sunday.
Since
the election of Donald J. Trump as president in the United States,
speculation had mounted that
Ms. Merkel would bow to pressure to stand
for election again and uphold liberal values in a world transformed by
Mr. Trump’s victory and Britain’s vote last summer to leave the European
Union.
Ms.
Merkel’s decision was reported by the DPA news agency and the
Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine newspapers; all of them
cited unnamed sources in the leadership of her Christian Democratic
party, which was meeting on Sunday afternoon.
Ms.
Merkel, 62, has served 11 years as chancellor. She is the first woman
and the first leader raised in Communist East Germany to hold the post.
Since
coming to power in 2005, Ms. Merkel, a scientist by training, has
gradually acquired a political stature commensurate with the power of
her country, Europe’s largest economy and most populous nation, with
about 81 million inhabitants.
But
her image as the cautious caretaker of her country’s interests has
suffered over the past year, after she opened Germany to hundreds of
thousands of asylum seekers, many of them Muslim refugees fleeing wars
in the Middle East and Africa.
The
prospect of integrating almost 1 million newcomers into Germany has
weakened Ms. Merkel’s standing at home, while garnering praise
particularly from President Obama.
Visiting
Berlin this past week, Mr. Obama lavished compliments on his
longest-standing ally in his eight years in office, saying that if he
were German, he would vote for her.
Ms.
Merkel, who is known for her patience and low-key style, responded to
the election of Mr. Trump with a robust appeal for him to stick to
Western values and respect human dignity. This, she said, was the basis
of any close cooperation.
At
the same time, even as commentators and leaders outside Germany invoked
her stature, Ms. Merkel has been characteristically eager not to hog
the limelight.
“One
person alone can never solve everything,” she said on Friday at a news
conference with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain. “We are strong
only together. In that, I want to do what my duty is as chancellor.”
Speculation
over Ms. Merkel’s decision has been rife since Mr. Trump’s election,
which leading commentators and members of her Christian Democratic Union
said would force her to stand, even if she was reluctant.
In
the days before a meeting of her party leadership on Sunday, several
Christian Democrats said that the next parliamentary elections, due in
fall 2017, would be difficult to win with Ms. Merkel, but impossible to
win without her.
Politics
in this conservative and comparatively wealthy country has been thrown
into turmoil by the rise of the populist, right-wing Alternative for
Germany party.
It
is now in 10 of the country’s 16 state parliaments and seems certain to
win seats in the federal Parliament next year. That would scramble
conventional coalition building, since no mainstream party has been
willing to govern with the populists.
Ms.
Merkel’s role as a beacon of liberal values may also be dented by the
power of populism elsewhere in Europe, whose union has been thrown into
ever greater doubt since Britain, the continent’s leading military
power, voted in June to leave the European Union.
Next
month, Italy votes on constitutional reforms that Prime Minister Matteo
Renzi considers crucial to his country’s modernity. Austria will choose
a president in an election plagued by delays, and may see the first
far-right politician elected as head of state in modern Europe.
The
Netherlands, France and Germany all hold key elections next year, with
the ballot in France in particular being closely watched as a bellwether
for the strength of populism as embodied by the National Front of
Marine Le Pen.
Speaking
in Berlin last week, Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France predicted
that “Europe can die” as a result of the populist wave and economic and
political dissonance in the 28-nation European Union.
No comments:
Post a Comment