Angela Merkel Re-Elected as the Chancellor of Germany for a 4th term
German lawmakers have voted to re-elect Angela Merkel as chancellor for a fourth term, and likely final, a term that may demonstrate her most challenging yet as she leads a fragile coalition with her standing diminished. The conservative Merkel will govern in a grand coalition with the Social Democrats.
In all, 364 members of the Bundestag voted for Merkel, while 315 voted against her. There were nine abstentions, and 21 parliamentarians were either absent or didn’t cast valid ballots.
Chancellor Angela Merkel waves during a session of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag to elect a new chancellor, in Berlin, Germany.(REUTERS)
“I accept the vote,” Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament after the vote. After the vote, Merkel headed over to Berlin’s Bellevue Palace to be sworn in by German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
This voting ends 171 days of waiting after Germany’s national popular election on September 24, 2017. Merkel was elected by deputies from her own conservative CDU-CSU and her junior coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Merkel’s conservatives won September’s election, taking 33 percent of the vote, ahead of the SPD with 20.5 percent. But both of those figures were down sharply from 2013, due in part to the rise of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which took 12.6 percent of the vote.
Merkel’s earlier attempt to form a coalition, with the centre-right Free Democrats and the Greens, failed. But she succeeded in doing a deal with the Social Democrats after weeks of negotiation and over the opposition of many regional SPD leaders and one-third of the party rank and file.
The 63-year-old Merkel is now ready to begin her fourth term as German chancellor and her third as the leader of a German grand coalition.
Source: The Independent The Kootneeti team - Europe Desk
