Friday 17th December 2021
He doesn’t have much time
Merz has to disappoint his fans
A comment by Hubertus Volmer
This decision is not without its risks. But after two CDU leaders from the Merkel wing failed to involve the other half of the party, a CDU chairman Merz is logical. It must now leave its conservative image behind.
The gags almost write themselves after the CDU members have decided by a large majority to make Friedrich Merz their party leader – a 66-year-old who has never held a government office and whose political career reached its peak before almost twenty Years ago.
And of course, a politician of retirement age is not exactly what is commonly associated with a new beginning. But 62.1 percent with two opposing candidates and a turnout of 66 percent is a strong mandate. All the predictions that now predict failure for him and the Union are one thing above all: cheap.
Of course, it is possible that Merz will have a power struggle with Union faction leader Ralph Brinkhaus in the coming months. “That the chairmanship of the CDU and the leadership of the Union parliamentary group should be in one hand is a principle that applies,” Merz said just a few days ago. Brinkhaus will have to face re-election in April – if the new party leader wants to take his office away from him, the CDU could face troubled times.
Merz has to go the opposite way
It is also possible that Merz and CSU boss Markus Söder argue publicly instead of rebuilding the union together. It is well known that the two cannot stand each other. Merz had called the Union parties’ dealings with one another “stylish, disrespectful and sometimes rowdy”, and it was clear that he was not referring to the CDU. Söder, on the other hand, thinks Merz is a man from the day before yesterday: The experience “Friedrich Merz had as an active politician in the 1990s definitely helps us,” he said in May with a biting undertone.
But maybe everything will turn out very differently, maybe Merz will manage what his predecessor Armin Laschet and his predecessor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer failed: to involve the opposing wing and to reconcile the CDU with itself. Because Laschet and AKK, both of whom come from the Merkel camp, went far to the opposite side. It was of no use to them.
Merz now has to go the opposite way. For many of his die-hard fans, the personified hope is a return of times that in truth never existed. If he wants to be successful as party leader, he will have to disappoint such expectations. Because he has to develop and offer a contemporary, modern alternative to the politics of traffic lights.
He does not have much time, voting will take place in Saarland in March and in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia in May. Three of the only four remaining CDU Prime Ministers want to be re-elected. These elections decide whether Merz is successful – and whether he can last longer than Laschet and AKK.