With support at an all-time low, will the European heavyweight political champion Angela Merkel be able to win the title for Germany next year?
With the clock ticking, world's most powerful woman is on the canvas but party is still ten points ahead of the centre-left SPD
THE world’s most powerful woman is on the canvas and the count has begun.
But the burning question is whether European heavyweight political champion Angela Merkel can claw herself upright, dust herself down and come back to win the title for Germany next year.
There are 1.3 million reasons against her — the number of refugees that have come into her country at her behest since last year.
Another 200,000 are expected before year’s end.
What began as an act of humanity — born in part out of Germany’s lingering guilt for World War Two — has seemingly morphed into Merkel’s political hara-kiri.
Fear of terrorists among the unregulated refugees, anxiety over rising sex crimes committed by them and a sense among its people that Germany may be losing its national character through the influx have served to bring her low.
“Germany now has that which it has feared since the end of World War Two,” said the respected broadsheet Die Welt.
“A strong right-wing party.”
That political party is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) which won an election in the Chancellor’s home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania a fortnight ago.
Led by party chairwoman Frauke Petry, The AfD forced Merkel’s CDU party out of government in the Berlin state parliament elections on Sunday.
Now the anti-immigrant, anti-EU AfD is looking to the national elections next year.
And Merkel seems powerless to stop them as their anti-refugee message resonates with an electorate which feels it is being lectured — and not listened — to.
At the weekend she finally jettisoned “we can do this”, her hated catchphrase assuring Germany that the immigrants could all be absorbed.
Her approval ratings are the lowest for five years.
Hans-Hermann Tiedje, a former policy adviser to former chancellor Helmut Kohl, said: “The German people has not been asked once if it wants this demographic restructuring of our country.
“She has made a huge mistake which will cost Germany billions.”
Having triggered the biggest rise in right-wing support since the Thirties, Merkel seems unable to curtail it.
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Supporters believe she can convince people that Germany’s open door is now only slightly ajar.
Moroccans and Algerians, for example, can no longer claim asylum in Germany.
She has curbed the right of extended families of refugees to visit their relatives in the country.
The government is also pledging to speed up deportations.
But she knows the clock is ticking.
Last week neo-Nazis hunted 20 migrants through the streets of the eastern town of Bautzen shouting “F*** off from our Nazi district!” while hurling rocks and stones.
Cops warn of the potential for right-wingers coalescing into terrorist-type cells — and attacks against asylum seekers require more and more police protection.
“Is The Merkel Era Coming To an End?” asked a headline in the news magazine Der Spiegel in a recent article.
Perhaps it is . . . or perhaps not.
Angela Merkel remains the one true giant in German politics.
Her party is still ten points ahead of the centre-left SPD.
And 1.3million refugees last year has been replaced with 300,000 this year.
Next year it will be even lower, say her aides.
For her part, Mrs Merkel will pray that there are no more terrorist outrages committed by refugees — like the Afghan who attacked passengers aboard a train with an axe in July, and days later the IS sleeper who blew himself up outside a cafe in Ansbach.
And no more mass sexual assaults like those committed by migrants on hundreds of women at Cologne railway station on New Year’s Eve.
“Taking out all the theatrical thunder and fuss, Mrs Merkel can certainly hope for another election victory,” said influential commentator Roland Nelles yesterday.
But it is how the refugee crisis plays out which will ultimately decide whether the Merkel era is over or merely going through the hardest of times.