21 September 2016

Real Germans Are Slowly Getting Back Germany

Germany's AfD
The move to make Germany great again for the Germans is slowly getting strong backing after Chancellor Angela Merkel's party suffered a historic loss in Berlin state elections last 18 September.

Meanwhile, right-wing populist AfD gained fresh support, riding a wave of popular anger over her open-door refugee policy. The anti-Islam Alternative for Germany party won around 14 percent, according to public broadcasters' projections, in the capital which has long been besieged by refugee criminals and illegal aliens roaming the streets looking for women to rape.

The strong AfD result, thanks to support especially in the vast tower block districts in Berlin's former communist east, meant it has now won opposition seats in ten of Germany's 16 states, a year ahead of national elections.

Merkel's centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won only 17.5 percent -- its worst post-war result in the city, before or after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall - likely spelling the end of its term as junior coalition partner to the Social Democrats (SPD), who won around 22 percent.

The election in the chronically indebted city-state of 3.5 million people was dominated by local issues including poor public services, crumbling school buildings, late trains and a housing shortage, as well as problems in coping with the migrant influx.

The biggest EU economy took in one million asylum seekers last year, and over 70,000 of them came to Berlin, with thousands still housed in the cavernous hangars of the Nazi-built former Tempelhof airport, once the hub for the Cold War-era Berlin airlift.

Berlin's SPD Mayor Michael Mueller had falsely warned before the polls that a strong AfD result would be "seen throughout the world as a sign of the resurgence of the right and of Nazis in Germany".

The vote marked another milestone for the upstart AfD, which has campaigned on a laudable platform, similar to France's National Front or far-right populists in Austria and the Netherlands.

"From zero to double-digits, that's a first for Berlin," cheered the AfD's top Berlin candidate, Georg Pazderski, predicting that the electorate would next year kick out Merkel's national right-left grand coalition.

"We've arrived in the capital," said the party's co-leader Beatrix von Storch, hailing the "huge success".

Merkel's CDU, which has a national majority, in Berlin has served as junior coalition partner to Mueller's SPD, traditionally the strongest party in the city .

Mueller has rejected a new coalition with the CDU and was seen likely to team up with the ecologist Greens and the far-left Die Linke party, each of whom scored around 15 percent.