Merkel’s Successor Tells Rebels They Are Hurting Their Party
Merkel’s Successor Tells Rebels They Are Hurting Their Party
(Bloomberg) --
The leader of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union pushed back against internal critics, saying fellow conservatives attacking the party’s record under the German chancellor are out of line.
CDU chairwoman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has come under pressure for failing to stamp her authority on the party since succeeding Merkel last December. She conceded it had been a “difficult year.”
But she urged members to focus on substance rather than debates over personnel -- that’s code for the mounting opposition to her claim to be the party’s candidate when the time comes to replace Merkel as chancellor.
Party infighting is “not a successful election strategy,” Kramp-Karrenbauer told delegates at a congress in Leipzig, eastern Germany.
“We are talking here about the future and about what we have to do to make sure that Germany is also successful in a decade’s time,” she said. “It’s not enough to be the repair shop for the country, we must be the workshop for the future.”
AKK, as she is known, won a tight leadership contest at last year’s party conference. But after a series of missteps, she is facing resistence to her claim to be the CDU candidate for chancellor when Merkel steps aside in 2021 at the latest.
“As party chairwoman, I’m the one who is leading this process,” Kramp-Karrenbauer told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an interview published Friday. She said anyone who wants to change that can try to at the conference -- effectively challenging her opponents.
The succession debate reflects a broader crisis in the CDU like those facing other European centrist parties seeing their poll numbers slide. Merkel’s party has lost voters to the far-right Alternative for Germany as well as the environmentalist Greens.
Instead of resolving the issue of who would follow Merkel, Kramp-Karrenbauer’s stewardship has failed to unite the party.
That’s left potential successors waiting in the wings, including Friedrich Merz, who narrowly lost his bid to lead the party to Kramp-Karrenbauer at last year’s convention. Jens Spahn, Merkel’s health minister, is another possible contender, who has locked in support from the party’s conservatives.
To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Leipzig, Germany at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net;Arne Delfs in Leipzig, Germany at adelfs@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Iain Rogers
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