{Merkel expects race to be “more difficult than any before” as she announces re-election bid after 11 years in office.}<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced her intention to seek a fourth term next year despite losing support over her refugee policy.<\/p>\n
Merkel, who has already served 11 years as chancellor, said on Sunday that she was expecting the upcoming general election, probably in September 2017, to be “more difficult than any before”. <\/p>\n
“I thought about this for an endlessly long time. The decision [to run] for a fourth term is – after 11 years in office – anything but trivial,” she said after a meeting of senior members of her Christian Democrats.<\/p>\n
Merkel is widely seen as a stabilising force in Europe amid uncertainty after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and as a bastion of western liberal values after the election of Donald Trump as the next US president.<\/p>\n
However, her decision last year to open Germany’s borders to about one million refugees, mostly from war zones in the Middle East, angered many voters at home and dented her ratings.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old conservative said she faced “challenges from all sides”, stressing that pressure from the right was particularly strong.<\/p>\n
“We have a strong polarisation in our society,” she said.<\/p>\n
The nationalist Alterative for Germany, or AfD, could prove one of the biggest stumbling blocks to her re-election.<\/p>\n
The populist party, which is now represented in 10 state parliaments, has aggressively campaigned against Merkel’s decision to welcome so many refugees into Germany last year.<\/p>\n
In elections in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania earlier this year, Merkel’s CDU party came third behind the Alliance for Germany.<\/p>\n
According to recent polls, the AfD would win about 10 percent of the vote if general elections were to be held now.<\/p>\n
An exact date has not yet been set for the elections, but they will take place sometime between August 23 and October 22.<\/p>\n
‘Pillar of stability’<\/p>\n
A physicist by training, Merkel became chancellor in 2005. She is the first leader of a reunited Germany to have grown up under communism in the former East Germany.<\/p>\n
If she wins next year and serves the entire four-year term, Merkel would match her one-time mentor Helmut Kohl’s post-war record of 16 years in office.<\/p>\n
Nearly 60 percent of Germans surveyed in a recent poll said they wanted Merkel to run for office again, said Manfred Guellner, the head of the Forsa polling agency.<\/p>\n
“In these difficult times, Merkel is a pillar of stability,” Guellner told The Associated Press news agency. “People have the feeling she represents German interests well abroad.”<\/p>\n
While she has never been described as a visionary or earned much praise for stirring speeches, Merkel has won respect for being tough and shrewd in doggedly tackling problems.<\/p>\n
Since becoming chancellor, she has dealt with several international crises, including the eurozone debt crisis in 2008-09, for which she brokered compromises among fractious European Union leaders.<\/p>\n
She has been a strong advocate of efforts to combat climate change, and in 2011 abruptly accelerated the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear power plants following the meltdowns at Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima plant.<\/p>\n
Unresolved diplomatic challenges include Europe’s relationship with Russia, the future of Ukraine, autocratic developments in Turkey, the ongoing war in Syria and negotiations over Britain’s exit from the EU.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said Merkel will stress to voters that her steady hand over the past decade is needed on the reins of Europe’s economic powerhouse.<\/p>\n
“From her perspective this election will be about showing to Germans why it’s so important they vote for somebody they can recognise as being a leader both in their country, but also someone the world sees as a person of real stature – who has been in charge of Germany, who has played such a central role in Europe, and indeed across the world,” Kane said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Merkel expects race to be “more difficult than any before” as she announces re-election bid after 11 years in office.} German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced her intention to seek a fourth term next year despite losing support over her refugee policy. Merkel, who has already served 11 years as chancellor, said on Sunday that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30472"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30472"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}