Post-election divisions emerge in Germany’s centre-right coalition | Germany

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A prominent German conservative congratulated the Social Democratic Party candidate on his national election victory on Sunday, in a sign of the split within outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right alliance after it plunged into historic losses.

Markus Söder, president of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU), the sister party of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said Olaf Schulz was the most likely candidate to become Germany’s next leader, undermining the claims of the Christian Democratic Union-CSU-CSU. That 25.7%-24.1 percentage result was too narrow to live up to a clear mandate and could still form a ‘future-oriented coalition’.

“Olav Schultz has the best chances of becoming a consultant,” Sodder said. “This is crystal clear.”

While Laschet reportedly refused to congratulate Schulz on his victory in the vote, Söder gave a standing ovation to the centre-left candidate, Germany’s finance minister and vice chancellor. “It is important to respect the result,” he said. “Part of it is that I congratulate Olaf Schultz once again.”

After an outcome that was narrower than many conservative activists had feared, the growing opposition within the CDU is now undermining Rheinlander’s hopes of keeping his party in power.

At a meeting in Dusseldorf, Laschet told party officials that he will resign as prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia at the end of October, but his new role in Berlin is far from clear.

In Berlin, the CDU congress was due to vote on its leader in the new parliament on Tuesday afternoon – the conservative party’s strongest role if it ends up in the opposition.

Laschet’s plan to hold the position only temporarily, allowing him to cling to his hopes of forming the next government, has met resistance from the incumbent, Ralph Brinkhaus, who is seeking re-election for a full year. Sodder also said Wednesday that he opposes a short-term “four to six weeks” reform.

If Laschet loses the party’s internal battle, he may risk ending up in a helpless back-bench role.

“It’s a strange alternate universe that the failed candidate has put together,” Der Spiegel wrote in a comment. Armin Laschet will probably need two more days to fully understand it. I have lost. is over.”

Eileen Demuth, the CDU delegate to the regional parliament in Rhineland-Palatinate, called on Twitter for Laschet to resign, saying that if he stuck to the post he would cause further damage to the party.

Meanwhile, the victorious SPD is pushing its pace to start coalition talks with the kingmakers in the next coalition government, the Greens and the FDP. Environmental and pro-business parties agreed to hold their first exploratory talks on Wednesday, without any of the big parties.

The Greens are likely to do so by shifting the balance of power within their party, following reports that its co-leader, Robert Habeck, will claim the role of vice chancellor in a future coalition government, not chancellor Annalena Barbock.

Burbock, who beat Habeck in the race to become the Greens’ official nominee in April, has presided over a solid 5.9 percentage point gain for her party in the last election, but failed to meet its aspirations to become the strongest force in the election. Country.

Habeck on Tuesday sidestepped questions about a deal over the role of vice chancellor, an unofficial title in Germany not mentioned in the constitution. “The question of who will be the vice chancellor is not relevant,” he said. “We don’t have a counselor.”

Recent polls show that every second of German citizens favor the next government of the so-called “traffic light alliance” between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, while only a quarter of them favor the CDU-led “Jamaica coalition”.

The continuation of the “grand coalition” that has ruled Germany for the past eight years is unpopular, with only 5% of those polled by Civey favoring it.

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