Merkel feels the pain after defeat in election

CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel brushed off criticism of her leadership yesterday after what she admitted was a “painful” weekend election disaster for her Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The mood was sombre in the Konrad Adenauer Haus, the party’s Berlin headquarters. At the post-election postmortem, Stefan Mappus, CDU leader in Baden-Württemberg, blamed Dr Merkel’s coalition partner for his party’s ejection from power in Stuttgart after half a century.

Facing the press, neither a wan Dr Merkel nor an ashen-faced Mr Mappus attempted to put a positive spin on the election rout.

“It’s a deep wound in the history of Baden-Württemberg and in the history of the CDU,” said Dr Merkel. “The pain from this loss won’t go away in just a day. We’ll have to work for a long time to overcome the pain this defeat has caused.” She admitted her party had been wrong-footed by voter unease with nuclear power over the Fukushima nuclear crisis – six months after it extended the life-span of German nuclear reactors.

“What happened in Japan is such an unlikely event that it will of course have an influence on the way we view nuclear energy in the future,” she said. “I’ve learned a lesson from Japan that one does one’s best with the best knowledge to cover all possible events but that it wasn’t sufficient.”

Before Mr Mappus resigned yesterday evening as CDU leader in Baden-Württemberg, he put the blame for the defeat on the shoulders of his FDP coalition colleagues.

“If the FDP had one per cent more we would have had the majority,” said Mr Mappus.

In private, he said the poor FDP showing was the work of one man: Rainer Brüderle, the FDP economics minister in Berlin. In remarks leaked last week, Mr Brüderle appeared to admit the sudden closure of seven ageing nuclear plants for safety checks – including one in Baden-Württemberg – was an election stunt.

“The blame doesn’t lie with the CDU in Berlin,” said Mr Mappus, “and certainly not with the chancellor.”

Not everyone in Stuttgart felt the same way: within hours, prominent critics were lining up to take pot shots at the German leader.

“It’s not just Japan and the energy issue, it’s the whole relationship of the party to business and the euro problem,” said Mr Josef Schlarmann, outgoing CDU business minister in Stuttgart.

Green Party leader Winfried Kretschmann celebrated his historical election success yesterday after doubling the party vote to 25 per cent. He began talks yesterday with the Social Democrats (SPD) to become Germany’s first ever Green state premier. “We will lead a coalition of equals with the SPD,” he promised, “that is the lesson from this election result”.

The FDP was licking its wound yesterday after its support was halved in the weekend vote.

Local party head Birgit Homburger, FDP general secretary in Berlin, is coming under pressure to resign. Party leader Guido Westerwelle dismissed questions about his position yesterday, saying: “When you have responsibility, you have responsibility.”