By David Crossland in Berlin
German Chancellor Angela Merkel flanked by a satisfied-looking Hesse state premier Roland Koch (right).
Fresh from a skiing holiday in the Alps, the German leader has hurtled into a regional election campaign with tough talk on immigration and youth crime that critics say is sowing public fear and dividing the nation.
Merkel has surprised political pundits by strongly backing Hesse state premier Roland Koch, a firebrand conservative who has incensed immigrant groups and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) with his calls for a crackdown on "criminal young foreigners" and for foreigners to adapt to Germany's way of life.
She supported Koch's calls for boot camps for young offenders and said it was "absurd" to suggest he was misusing the issue to win votes in a Hesse state election on Jan. 27. The debate follows the brutal assault on a 76-year-old German pensioner by two foreign youths, a Turk and a Greek, in a Munich subway station before Christmas.
"It's natural for such an issue that affects people to be discussed in the campaign," she told Sunday tabloid Bild am Sonntag. "We can't have people avoiding the subway at night because they're afraid of being attacked."
Commentators have picked up on the fact that Merkel made no such calls for tough action following a recent spate of assaults by far-right youths on minorities, and that crime by foreigners has actually been falling in Germany according to official figures. The leader of the center-left SPD, Kurt Beck, accused Merkel's Christian Democrat CDU of "right-wing populism."
Bernhard Wessels, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, said he was amazed that Merkel had echoed Koch's hard line. "She's more a mediator than a tough law and order woman, it's unlike her to respond so fiercely," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Into the Fray
After staying out of party politics over the last two years at the helm of a power-sharing coalition, Merkel is getting her hands dirty. Analysts say she has little choice because the remaining two years of her term are going to be a lot tougher than the first half.
Just as the economy is slowing, elections are coming up and she has to make sure they go well for her CDU to avoid uncomfortable questions about her leadership ahead of the general election expected in late 2009. Meanwhile, Merkel no longer has a world stage to shine on now that Germany's rotating European Union and G-8 presidencies have passed on to other countries.
Besides, in Europe, the pastor's daughter, who is often described by critics as uncharismatic, has been eclipsed by French President Nicholas Sarkozy's penchant for high-profile, media-effective diplomacy and his decidedly more interesting personal life.
"This debate has damaged Merkel because she has sacrificed some of her presidential nature, but it would be even worse for her if Koch lost Hesse," said Dietmar Herz, a professor of political science at Erfurt University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Backing him is definitely the lesser of two evils."
"The remainder of her term will be a period of constant election campaigning. She will be forced to join in, and she's not a good campaigner."
Uncomfortable Campaigner
The 2005 general election should have been a walkover for the CDU given the previous government's unpopular welfare cuts, but Merkel came close to losing it and ended up having to share power with the SPD. She had misread the mood of the nation with a radical flat-tax proposal, and she wasn't helped by her unemotional style.
The outcome of the US election could also pose problems for Merkel, because it will be harder to reject demands from a newly elected president in Washington than from the deeply unpopular George W. Bush, according to Herz. Should a new president ask for greater German military involvement in Afghanistan, for example, Merkel will face the kind of quandary she has so far managed to avoid.
The CDU-led governments in Hesse and Lower Saxony face elections on Jan. 27, followed by the city-state of Hamburg on Feb. 24 and Bavaria on Sept. 28. In addition to local elections in a number of states, there will be state elections in Thuringia, Brandenburg, Saarland and Saxony in 2009.
Such mid-term votes slow down nationwide policy-making at the best of times in Germany, as parties are too busy attacking each other to agree on anything. But with the two biggest parties, the CDU and the SPD, locked in a grand coalition, meaningful progress on reforms of any kind is well-nigh impossible for the rest of her term, analysts say.
Cowardly?
The influential center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that Merkel had made a big mistake in unequivocally backing a hardliner like Koch. "Why didn't she say one word about the fact that youth crime isn't just committed by young people from immigrant backgrounds but also by German right-wing extremists?" the paper asked.
"So far Merkel was unable and unwilling to emotionalize elections. That was part of her personal style. The fact that she's now giving that up is neither brave nor clever, it's cowardly."
Manfred Güllner, director of the Forsa polling institute, isn't quite so gloomy about Merkel's prospects. "People see the violence and there's a huge sense of unease in the population. What Koch's doing is clever. It's excellent campaign tactics," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
"Besides, Merkel's personal approval ratings may have slipped a little but they're still very strong." Some 54-55 percent of Germans say they would vote for Merkel if German chancellors were elected directly, rather than via political parties, Güllner said. That's down from unprecedented mid-term ratings late last year when she had 58 to 59 percent support, helped by what was seen as her successful stewardship of the EU and G-8.
"She's lucky to have Kurt Beck as her counterpart," said Güllner. The SPD leader, tipped at this stage as most likely to run for the chancellorship as the SPD candidate in 2009, is stuck at 18 percent.
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