Merkel Re-elected in Show of Strong Support for Party - New York Times

(Top Stories - Google News) Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed supporters after exit polls were broadcast on television in Berlin on Sunday. Voters gave her a third four-year term and a better-than-expected showing for her Christian Democrat party, possibly leading to an absolute majority in Parliament, a rarity in post-war German politics. BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel scored a stunning personal triumph in Sunday's national elections in Germany, becoming the only major leader to be re-elected twice since the financial crisis of 2008 and winning strong popular endorsement for her mix of austerity and solidarity in managing troubled Europe. Although final vote tallies were not expected until Monday, the surprising show of strength for the chancellor and her center-right Christian Democrats — even their own polls had not suggested such a result — might just translate into an absolute majority, according to exit polls by both major German television stations. That is something no German chancellor has achieved since Konrad Adenauer in 1957. Ms. Merkel, 59 and a physicist raised in Communist East Germany, was unusually buoyant when she appeared before supporters, who chanted "Angie! Angie!" and gave her two whole minutes of applause at party headquarters. She exuberantly thanked voters, campaigners and her husband, the quantum chemist Joachim Sauer. Mr. Sauer, who tends to shun the limelight, stood at the side of the stage, acknowledging the jubilation of her fans. Later, during a raucous celebration at her party headquarters, Ms. Merkel clapped and sang along with the crowds but reminded them, "Tomorrow, we work." For all her success, it is not clear how Ms. Merkel will govern in her third four-year term. Her allies for the past four years, the business-minded Free Democrats, were expected to lose their place in Parliament, missing the 5 percent cutoff. And a narrow majority would be unstable — risking defeat in crucial parliamentary votes needed to pass more aid or credits for troubled economies. So the most likely course is that Ms. Merkel will enter a grand coalition with the No. 2 party nationally, the center-left Social Democrats. In the past three years, the Social Democrats have given crucial support to Ms. Merkel in Parliament in passing credit lines and aid packages, tied to painful reforms, for euro-zone countries in need. But the center-leftists are likely to extract a high price in domestic reforms — a minimum wage, or social change — in exchange for joining a Merkel government in which they would be clearly the junior partner. Exit poll projections showed them with around 25 percent, far below their center-right rivals, whose vote totals are projected to be around 42 percent. Ms. Merkel entered politics after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. She is now widely viewed as the world's most powerful woman, and set to overtake Margaret Thatcher as Europe's longest-serving elected female leader. Her critics accuse her of lacking strategic vision, relying on tactical skills to survive, and ask why she has not used her power to write more history, both at home and in the unified Europe that is the source of Germany's political and economic strength. "She has a technocratic understanding of Europe," said Joschka Fischer, the former Greens leader and foreign minister from 1998 to 2005. But, he added, "Europe is not a scientific project." The euro crisis, in this view, is about politics and sovereignty, and how much of the latter the 17 nations that use the euro, and the 11 others in the European Union, are prepared to abandon to make a success of their project. Mr. Fischer sees Germany, and Europe, as stuck midway while crossing a river, unable to return to the riverbank they have left, but unable to get to the other side with Ms. Merkel as navigator. Other analysts suggested that neither the chancellor nor most Germans, who are conservative by nature and relish their position as the economic powerhouse of Europe, are prepared to shoulder such leadership. Sunday's election outcome "is the safest course for a country like Germany," Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, said in a telephone interview from Washington. The mentality, she said, is "Why rock the boat?" Melissa Eddy and Jack Ewing contributed reporting. Original source: Top Stories - Google News

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