Party
colleagues ‘stabbing Merkel in back’ over refugees
Published: 22 Feb
2016 10:58 GMT+01:00
Two senior members
of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party have been accused of stabbing
her in the back, after publicly criticizing her refugee policy in the
run-up to crucial state elections.
Over the weekend
Julia Klöckner and Guido Wolf demanded in an open letter that the
government implement daily quotas for the number of asylum seekers
allowed into the country and set up processing centres at the
country’s borders.
Merkel has long
resisted demands from more hawkish members of her government that she
impose an upper limit on the amount of refugees Germany takes in.
Klöckner and Wolf,
both of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), are vying to become
minister-president - the German equivalent of governors - in state
elections due to be held in mid-March in Rhineland-Palatinate and
Baden-Württemberg.
Both candidates are
fighting fiercely close contests and have the chance to win back
control of the states for the conservative party.
In
Rhineland-Palatinate, an INSA survey published on Monday puts
Klöckner two point ahead of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 35
percent. In Baden-Württemberg Wolf lies half a point behind the
ruling Green Party on 30 percent.
In the German
proportional representation system parties try and form a coalition
with junior partners which will give them a controlling majority in
the parliament.
The open letter,
demanding a stricter approach to dealing with refugees, has widely
been interpreted as an attempt to win votesrs away from the
Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Populist right-wing
AfD have seen their poll share soar in recent months as large
sections of the German public have grown sceptical of Merkel’s
refugee stance.
In
Rhineland-Palatinate the AfD are currently polling at 8.5 percent,
while in Baden-Württemberg they are predicted to win 10 percent of
the vote, according to INSA.
Those scores are
comfortably above the five percent threshold needed to enter state
parliaments - a first in the party's history in the two south-western
states.
‘Back stabbing’
But Sigmar Gabriel,
vice-Chancellor and SPD leader, accused Klöckner and Wolf of
betraying their party leader at a time when she desperately needs
their support.
“It’s neither
smart nor decent to stab the German Chancellor in the back in the
middle of European negotiations,” Gabriel told Spiegel Online,
referring to last week’s EU summit in Brussels at which Merkel
called for European solidarity in the refugee crisis.
Gabriel aimed his
wrath particularly at Klöckner, who is also party deputy to Merkel
at the national level - and seen by some as a potential future
successor.
“Frau Klöckner is
undermining the German negotiating position and she’s weakening the
position of the German Chancellor,” Gabriel stated.
“We need to defend
Europe’s external borders and to cooperate with Turkey on
controlling people smugglers - we don’t need to follow some
self-interested course like Austria or the eastern European states,”
the vice-Chancellor said.
The two election
candidates also drew fire from within their own party, with one
European politician accusing them of “descending into panic” in
the run-up to the state elections.
Merkel herself has
so far stayed silent on Klöckner and Wolf's letter.
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