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- 1 Angela Merkel’s long innings as German Chancellor | See pics : Rashtra News
Angela Merkel’s long innings as German Chancellor | See pics : Rashtra News
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, dubbed as Germany’s “eternal” chancellor, is all prepared to leave the stage after staying in power for 16 years.
Angela Merkel speaks during a news conference with the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana, Albania. (AP)
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel has steered Europe’s largest economy through the global financial crisis, the refugee crisis and the coronavirus pandemic in her 16 years in office.
In office so long she was dubbed Germany’s “eternal chancellor”, Merkel, 67, leaves with her popularity so resilient she would likely have won a record fifth term had she sought it.
Instead, Merkel will pass the baton as the first German chancellor to step down entirely by choice, with a whole generation of voters never knowing another person at the top.
Her supporters say she provided steady, pragmatic leadership through countless global crises as a moderate and unifying figure.
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1Germany’s ‘eternal’ chancellor
In Pic: Angela Merkel, front right, poses for a photo with a visitor at the weekly market in her former constituency in Marlow, Germany. The outgoing chancellor had come to the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for a surprise visit. Angela Merkel, dubbed as Germany’s “eternal” chancellor, is all prepared to leave the stage after staying in power for 16 years. (AP)
2Merkel’s legacy
What is certain is that she leaves behind a fractured political landscape. It is also because of the long shadow she casts that her party’s candidate, Armin Laschet, has struggled to sharpen his own profile. Assuming she stays on to hand over power, Angela Merkel will tie or exceed Helmut Kohl’s longevity record for a post-war leader, depending on how long the upcoming coalition negotiations drag on. (AP)
3‘Do the right thing’
The unflappable Merkel has served for many in recent years as a welcome counterbalance to the big, brash men of global politics, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin. A Pew Research Center poll showed large majorities in most democracies around the globe having “confidence in Merkel to do the right thing in world affairs”. However, the last days of her tenure have also been marred by what Merkel called the “bitter, dramatic and terrible” return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan — a debacle in which she shares the blame as Germany completed its evacuation. (AP)
4‘Austerity queen’
Before the coronavirus pandemic, her boldest move — keeping open German borders in 2015 to more than one million asylum seekers — seemed set to determine her legacy. But while many Germans rallied to Merkel’s “We can do it” cry, the move also emboldened an anti-migrant party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), ushering a far-right bloc into parliament for the first time since World War II.
5Kohl’s ‘girl’ to ‘Mummy’
She was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954 in the port city of Hamburg, the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman and a schoolteacher. Her father moved the family to a small-town parish in the communist East at a time when tens of thousands were headed the other way. Merkel kept the name of her first husband, whom she married in 1977 and divorced five years later. (AP)
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( News Source :Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Rashtra News staff and is published from a www.indiatoday.in feed.)
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