After sixteen years as chancellor, everyone would have had enough, but Angela Merkel in particular. I have to confess with lowered eyes, for the first time, sixteen years ago, I also voted for him, i.e. the CDU. Because I thought it would be good for the country if a rational woman familiar with the natural sciences took over the power after the "basta" chancellor with many social science educations. Because I didn't know at the time that the East German activist girl, the same age as me, with a similar socialization in our teenage years, only wanted power. When he got to the top, he didn't know what to do with the country.
At the time, I didn't know how much this cadre lady with a privileged position in the GDR, who was also found suitable for traveling to the West (!), subordinated everything in her life to her career. The help of her later second husband came in handy for her doctoral work, the FDJ (like the KISZ) basic organizational position in the academic researcher, and when the wall came down, the circle of friends of the peace (i.e. communist) priest father smoothed the bumps in the road leading to ascension. Angela first knocked on the center of the social democrats, she was unsuccessful there, because they would have sent her to a grassroots organization, but thanks to her father's church connections, she immediately became the deputy spokesperson of the Democratic Movement (DA). The founder of the party was soon found to be an informer, the party ceased to exist and was dissolved in the CDU, to which Angela never applied and never wanted to be a member.
Chancellor Kohl either didn't know the latter fact, or it wouldn't have mattered to him, because he absolutely needed an East German woman to apparently counterbalance the superiority of Western men in the first government of reunified Germany. This is how the childless Angela Merkel became Kohl's "little girl" and minister of family affairs. And later the Minister of Environment. Angela, as soon as she had the chance, executed her party father, pulled Kohl off the throne with an FAZ article in the context of the party financing scandal, and after the "heir to the throne" Scheuble also fell into a party donation handed over in cash and not officially recorded, - but there could have been many more people involved , - in any case, Mrs. Merkel made good use of the opportunity and quickly became the president of the CDU. What's more, with a hussar cut he was able to remove the otherwise extremely popular and talented Friedrich Merz from the head of the powerful CDU-CSU parliamentary faction. Once in a while, he allowed someone to get ahead of him, but only because he could guess from reliable polling data that neither he nor the CSU candidate for chancellor would have a chance to win, so in 2002 the social democrat Schröder remained the chancellor. Who was overthrown by his own people in 2005 to such an extent that they entered into a grand coalition with the opponent, that is how Angela Merkel came to power by a hair's breadth.
The tough labor market reforms introduced by Schröder brought the expected improvement in the first years of Merkel's chancellorship, i.e. good economic results fell into Merkel's lap, anyway one had the feeling that when she reached the top, the disruptive activity froze into inactivity, this was already called mediating leadership style, waiting, outcome-dependent analysis, calm governance, in any case, Merkel's governance from the outside was not characterized by leadership decisiveness. But this would not have been necessary until the financial crisis, as a result of the neoliberal reforms of the social democrats, the German economy was in a state of disarray. During the financial crisis, irrationalities and contract violations began. Under the guise of "saving" Greece, Merkel bailed out German and French banks while kicking up the relevant Euro contracts. Due to the Japanese tsunami, he turned exactly 180 degrees and ordered the partial immediate and partial gradual closure of the German nuclear power plants. The flood in North Rhine-Westphalia later caused war damage in the Ahr valley, because during that time not a single penny was spent on the modernization of the infrastructure under the chancellor. It was not for nothing that the CDU candidate for chancellor said in the campaign that Germany is ripe for resolution. While his own party was in power for 16 years. But only apparently. Merkel's place would have been in a party that is green on the outside and red on the inside. Its complete irrationality during the refugee crisis has been exhaustively documented. But let's not forget that he practically destroyed his own party, the CDU, the strongest proof of this is the appearance of the AfD on the German party political palette. It is a direct consequence of Merkel's AfD policy. Countless sentences could be quoted from Merkel herself, from the fencing in favor of nuclear energy to the failure of integration, which today the AfD represents and labels as a far-right position. He chased away all talented and capable people, often placing them in positions where they did more harm than good. The long clapping sole lickers remained. By supporting the Afghan adventure, under Merkel, we defended and are defending Germany in Afghanistan and ten other places, which is in complete contrast to the original perception of the Bundeswehr. He declared digitization as his task sometime around 2016, nothing has happened since then, the German internet network is at the level of a developing country. I suspect that it is because the former physicist, as a politician, fell asleep to scientific and technical progress and lived only on what he had acquired until 1990. And that is not enough for anything today.
How the promised utopian CO2 reduction can be carried out without nuclear power plants, while also shutting down coal power plants, is a mystery for the time being. It is a fact that German residents already pay the highest utility costs in the world, taxes are sky high and there is no prospect of improvement. The authorities responded to the uproar against Merkel's policy by making the AfD a pariah and introducing censorship, thus hypocrisy reached its peak. In any case, Merkel's discussions with Zuckerberg or her tea parties with the owners of part of the German press did not prove useless.
During Merkel's chancellorship, the power of the branches of power either decreased or they were unidirectional. The Constitutional Court is a shadow of itself, and if it - just once - expresses its disapproval of the over-expansion of the EU, it does so only with an apology. The power of the (mainstream) press is becoming more and more obvious, whoever they attack will sooner or later fall. And even if it turns out later - usually - that what was claimed was not true (e.g. in the case of Christian Wulf), by then the unfortunate person has already lost everything. This is the 21st century. century modern form of lynching. Supported by Merkel…
The Corona crisis only culminated in Merkel's disaster management. They talked back and forth and have been talking since the beginning. At the time when penny protective equipment would have been needed, it turned out that the Merkel government, despite the fact that a study was presented to the Bundestag in 2012 in which exactly such a pandemic was described, disaster protection was neglected (like so many other things), i.e. nothing nor was it in stock for such an emergency. Nothing. In other cases, it is possible to talk side-by-side, to obfuscate, but here it became clear in black and white that Mrs. Merkel was only interested in her privileges, not so much in the country. It is no coincidence that he wants an entire company's office for his retirement years, so that he can continue to bask in his own glory as a boss. At the same time, he presents himself as a modest, simple citizen, and most of the people accept this. But he just can't undress the behavior of socialism. Where the same was the case. The leaders pretended to be children of the people while they bathed in privileges, from hunting castles to villas in Rózsádomb or Wandlitz.
One thing is for sure. An era ended today. That the successor who gave a few hundred million Euros of taxpayers' money to a private bank in Hamburg in the cumex cases, was finance minister during the Wirecard scandal and let antifa destroy Hamburg, while he sat with the leaders of the G20 in the Elbe Philharmonic, what kind of chancellor will he be, time will tell.
Author: dr. Andrea Martin
Photo: EPA/Omer Messinger
