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Merkel rallies party ahead of crunch 2011

15 November 2010 21:08 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her ruling conservatives to stick to their guns on Monday ahead of a crunch year when the party risks being punished in a series of state elections, APA reports quoting AFP.
But at a party conference in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany, a few disgruntled members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposed Merkel’s re-election as head of the party.
"It is absolutely fine for decisions that we have taken this autumn to be contentious," Merkel, chancellor since 2005 and party leader since 2000, told the conference.
"They will prove to have been necessary and at the end of the day they will convince people," she said before receiving a nine-minute standing ovation for her 75-minute speech.
Germany’s first female leader remains the unchallenged queen of the CDU but this could change if the party does badly in 2011’s "super election year" when six of Germany’s 16 states go to the polls.
Although Merkel was re-elected unopposed as party leader on Monday, her share of the vote fell slightly, from 94.8 percent to 90.4 percent, her lowest since 2004, in what the influential Spiegel magazine called a "small warning."
"But any score over 90 percent is okay," analyst political scientist Gero Neugebauer told AFP.
Since forming a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) after elections in September 2009, the CDU’s poll ratings have remained stubbornly weak, while those of the FDP have plummeted.
In May, the CDU and the FDP got a taste of voter unhappiness when they lost power in the most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, costing the coalition its majority in the federal upper house in Berlin.
"The achievements of the ... government could be seen in its deeds, but not always in its style. Our friends in North Rhine-Westphalia suffered because of this," Merkel said on Monday.
In the wealthy state hosting the party congress, Baden-Wuerttemberg, the CDU could find itself turfed out of power for the first time since 1952 in the most important of the 2011 elections.
After winning a second term, Merkel killed off an unhappy "grand coalition" with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), but her "dream coalition" with the FDP has seemed at times more like a nightmare.
Merkel and Wolfgang Schaeuble, her finance minister, have fought hard to resist calls from the FDP -- and from abroad -- for tax cuts to boost the economy, preferring instead to reduce Germany’s budget deficit by cutting spending.
"We have to do things in the proper order: first budgetary consolidation, simplify taxes, then cut taxes," Merkel said.
The coalition partners have also fallen out over a range of issues like healthcare reform, social security and military service, allowing the opposition -- particularly the ecologist Greens -- to gather support.
The eurozone debt crisis earlier this year also dented Merkel’s popularity, while there has been an exodus of senior conservatives including president Horst Koehler over an interview gaffe.
The government’s decision to postpone when Germany abandons nuclear power has sparked mass protests, most recently when a radioactive waste shipment needed a 20,000-strong police escort to reach its destination.
Merkel "has to address the core problems of her time in office," the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily said. "Otherwise she can kiss goodbye to the hope of being elected again next time."