The end of the Merkel era is complicated for the CDU

The governor of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, celebrates her electoral victory together with the vice chancellor and SPD candidate, Olaf Scholz, this Monday in Berlin.Christian Marquardt / POOL / EFE

The battle for the succession of Angela Merkel, who is retiring this year, is more open than ever and it looks worse and worse for her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has ruled in Germany uninterruptedly since 2005. The CDU crashed this weekend in two regional elections, the first of the electoral superyear that will culminate in six months with the first federal elections to which the chancellor does not appear.

The CDU was not expected to win, but the steep drop in the vote did come as a surprise.

And the other parties have smelled the blood.

The Social Democrats, who currently rule in a grand coalition with the Conservatives, already see themselves in a federal government without Merkel's party.

The regional elections "have shown that forming a government without the CDU is possible in Germany," said Olaf Scholz, Merkel's deputy chancellor, finance minister and SPD candidate for generals.

Last Sunday's elections "have left that message," he added.

The Greens, who know they are decisive in almost any alliance that emerges in September, remained unknown whether they would prefer a coalition with the Conservatives or a three-way agreement with Social Democrats and Liberals.

"Our long-term strategy is pragmatism," announced one of its co-leaders, Robert Habeck.

The Greens have not yet chosen their candidate for the federal elections.

• The CDU suffers a severe setback in two regionals that propel the Greens in a key election year in Germany

• Merkel's successor in the CDU faces its first electoral test with two regional elections

Everything is calculations, sums of percentages and reviews of the electoral programs to see if there would be compatibility in a future marriage.

With the bipartisanship in the doldrums, the electoral landscape is so fragmented that multiple government options open up: a coalition of the conservatives (CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU) with the Greens, who are already the second force with the greatest intention to vote. ;

the so-called

because of the colors of its participants (social democratic red, environmental green and yellow of the FDP liberals);

an alliance between conservatives, greens and FDP, and even reissue the grand coalition between CDU / CSU and SPD.

The polls continue to give the conservative bloc a great advantage, with 33% voting intention.

The Greens would have 18%, the SPD 16%, the AfD ultra-right 10% and both the Liberals and the left-wing Die Linke party would tie at 8%.

Having one in three votes in your pocket - if the elections were today - is no longer a guarantee of anything, as the leader of the Bavarian Conservatives, Markus Söder, verbalized this Monday.

"The results have been a severe blow to the heart of the Union," he acknowledged, admitting that it is perfectly possible that a majority will be formed without them.

To Söder, the defeat in the state of Baden-Württemberg, neighboring Bavaria, which for almost six decades was a fiefdom of the Conservatives, seems “especially painful”.

On Sunday the CDU recorded in this region of 11 million inhabitants and headquarters of prominent German industries such as Bosch, Porsche and Mercedes Benz, the worst result in its history.

The charismatic green candidate, Winfried Kretschmann, swept for the third time in a row with almost one in three votes and it is far from clear that he will once again have the CDU as a junior partner in the coalition that has governed this legislature.

The "debacle" - as various German media have called it - in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland Palatinate increases the pressure on the new leader of the CDU, Armin Laschet, who has barely had time to settle in his post.

Laschet was elected in January and has already faced an alleged corruption scandal in conservative ranks.

A week before the regional elections, it was revealed that at least two deputies (one from the CDU and the other from the CSU) had charged hefty commissions for intermediating in the purchase of masks during the first wave of the pandemic.

Another CDU deputy has resigned for receiving payments from Azerbaijan and two more elected officials are being investigated for their alleged lobbying activities in favor of this dictatorship.

The conservatives have not yet chosen their candidate for the federal elections, a position that Laschet and Söder, representatives of the centrist and right-wing current, dispute, respectively.

The profile of the chosen one will also determine the possible coalitions.

Laschet did not comment on the results on election night. This Monday he gave a press conference to present the new anti-corruption code of conduct that the training has presented, which implies the immediate expulsion of those who violate it. Faced with questions about those alliances that would leave out the union of CDU and CSU, he tried to take the issue away: "The hypothesis of other majorities is not new, it is not a cause for alarm." But there is concern in his party, according to

published

from sources present at a previous meeting. The comfortable certainty of favorable polls has faded in a few weeks. They no longer take it for granted that Merkel's successor will be the chancellor candidate they designate. Sunday's electoral defeat is one more obstacle. The political scientist Gero Neugebauer, from the Free University of Berlin, explains that the “crisis” of leadership of the conservatives stems from “deficits in credibility and reliability, especially by the Bundestag deputies who made money with the masks, but also by the mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis ”. Unlike the first wave, fewer and fewer Germans approve of Merkel's government measures. Four months of restrictions are taking its toll.