Support for Merkel’s party is crumbling

On Sunday, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) suffered a historic election defeat in their former heartlands of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. ‘The state elections struck deep at the heart of the union of the CDU and CSU,’ said Markus Söder, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.

To an increasingly frustrated public, the ruling parties in the capital look tired and devoid of ideas. There is no incentive for Merkel and her cabinet to turn things around. After 16 years in government and on the brink of retirement, she has become a lame-duck chancellor. Some German journalists have even begun to call the whole sorry saga ‘the duck tales’.

Instead of addressing vaccine problems that are costing lives and livelihoods, the government is pointing the finger — at each other, at the USA, at AstraZeneca. While the EU Commission brags that it is the ‘number one supplier of Covid-19 vaccines to the world’, clinically vulnerable Germans are struggling to get vaccinated as the country struggles to ramp up the roll-out.