German Chancellor Angela Merkel, battered from all sides for her response to Europe’s economic crisis, was in more hot water yesterday after the second high-profile resignation within a week.
Only six days after Roland Koch, the outspoken premier of Hesse, home to banking capital Frankfurt, stepped down, President Horst Koehler shocked Germany on Monday with an emotional resignation. Both moves came out of the blue.
Analysts said the loss of two heavyweights from her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was a fresh headache for Merkel, already suffering from plunging popularity ratings less than a year into a second term.
PHOTO: EPA
“She has lost Koch, she is losing Koehler, who is not very important in terms of political power, but it is symbolic and it could create some panic,” political scientist Nils Diederich from Berlin’s Free University said.
“If she doesn’t manage to get a grip on her political agenda in the coming weeks, she is not going to serve out her full term,” he added.
Merkel, 55, said she “wholeheartedly” regretted Koehler’s resignation and admitted she would miss the advice of the former IMF head, particularly on economic and financial issues.
And she now finds herself having to identify, within 30 days, a candidate for the largely ceremonial post who would be acceptable to all sides of her squabbling coalition of conservatives and pro-business Free Democrats.
“Koehler’s resignation in the midst of the euro-crisis could push Angela Merkel’s ... coalition into severe difficulties,” the influential mass circulation daily Bild said.
“Merkel has already lost CDU-mentor Roland Koch. This is another serious setback,” the paper added.
However, another political analyst, Lothar Probst, from the University of Bremen, played down the consequences for Merkel, stressing that “for the moment, no one is calling for her to step down.”
“If she can bring some calm to the coalition, she can still finish her term without too much damage,” he said.
However, the resignations represented the latest in a string of political reverses at home and abroad for Merkel, last year voted Forbes magazine’s most powerful woman for the fourth consecutive time.
Domestically, she lost a key regional election on May 9 that cost her the majority in Germany’s upper house.
Further afield, she has been slammed for what is seen as a hesitant response to the fiscal crisis in Greece and faces a flood of fiscal red ink herself that may mean she has to raise taxes after campaigning on a promise to cut them.
It was Afghanistan that caused the resignation of the 67-year-old Koehler after he came under fire for comments about Germany’s overseas military action in which he appeared to justify the mission in terms of commercial gain.
Thirty-nine German soldiers have died since 2002 in Afghanistan in a mission that is bitterly unpopular in the country.
As for Koch, he said he was stepping down to work in the private sector, denying furiously that he was leaving due to a spat with Merkel, whose meteoric rise is widely seen to have caused resentment in the 52-year-old.
After Koehler stepped down, Merkel said: “I think that the German people will be very sad about this resignation.”
And according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Merkel too has reason to be sad.
Koehler’s “act of desperation” in resigning “does not augur well for the future of this coalition,” the influential daily said in an editorial.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS