Originally Posted by PeeCoffee
BERLIN (Reuters) - Fears in Germany that voter apathy could boost the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Sunday’s election have driven Chancellor Angela Merkel and her main rival in final days of the campaign to urge their backers to go out and vote.
With many voters viewing a fourth term for Merkel as almost inevitable and turned off by a turgid campaign - occasionally punctured by heckling and tomato hurling in protest at Merkel's refugee policy - pollsters say turnout may be low.
A GMS poll on Thursday said those not planning to vote or were undecided numbered 34 percent, higher than the 29 percent who did not vote in the last election in 2013.
“My request to everyone is that they vote, and vote for those parties that adhere 100 percent to our constitution,” Merkel told MDR radio on Thursday, pointing to the AfD which has been likened by some commentators to Hitler’s Nazis.
Some of its members have called for Germans to rewrite the history books on Nazi era and the party has been dogged by rows over Holocaust denial, a crime in Germany.
Fearing far-right surge, Merkel tells Germans to vote on Sunday | Reuters
Too late to fear the mad fuhrer Merkel, she's already destroyed the country. Now the nut job is telling Germany to fear anybody who doesn't support her .
She is an experienced and influential politician, so the problem isn't her urging the people to fear opposition to her policies that have irreversibly triggered the end of not just her country but others which will speed along when she is re-elected, it's that so many voters will fall for it.
Don't ignore the Turks ...
The diplomatic fallout between Turkey and Germany can be felt even from the sidelines of a suburban soccer match in Munich.
Last month, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan called on Turks in Germany to vote against the major political parties in the September 24 election.
The comments drew a furious response from conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and have shone a spotlight on the 3 million people
of Turkish descent who call Germany home.
Here
Merkel should be tied up and shot for treason.
She has fooked Germany by flooding the shit house with Immigrants.
Germany can now look forward to a bleak economic future .
A great legacy she has left the German people. ??????
She is actually a very thoughtful and considered politician. Ex East German who understood the potential crippling effects of the country’s very low birth rate.
Using refugees to bridge that gap by importing ready made employees at all levels was actually a smart move.
^
I agree with you, Merkel is certainly a decent human being but one cannot flood a country with refugees without causing serious unrest.
The unrest is happening right now and she will pay with her political life.
Letting the East Germans integrate was a great leap forward but these outside boat people coming in by the many thousands. ??
No way.
^
Yer well that happens when a leader goes against what most people would call a reasonable amount of refugees being allowed into the country.
The amount of refugees in Germany now is totally over the top.
A true leader knows when to stem the flow such as has now happened in Australia.
Merkel has the long term in mind mate. She is a very deep thinker, and probably realizes she got it wrong on immigration numbers. It does help the very low birth rate in the long run and industry understands this.
her main worry for Sunday is a low turn out making fringe parties look good.
Europe and Australia are not comparable.
Remember Germany is used to ‘guest workers’ from post WWII. Poles, Turks, Portuguese all there in large numbers.
Why all the fuss anyway she's going to win regardless.
"triggered"?
It's classic propaganda to try and define your enemy and use all the media outlets to pump out the big lie politics - which is exactly what the far left is doing by trying to call the centre the "far right"... of course the centre is far right of the far left, that's just simple relativism that should come natural to morons who support Merkel.
Germany, like much of western Europe has no decent alternatives to the reckless imbeciles that rule over it, because the left-wing media machine will personally vilify anyone who dissents from the party line... we are in a literal "sinister mediocracy" - government by left-wing media.
...and anyone who calls them out will be attacked as a "far right loon" - this dribbling and belching out of the frothy mouths of the puritan book-burning far-left loons... cue TD's own tedious lumpen moronotariat and pseduointelligensia...
This probably explains why Germany is such a highly respected and profitable industrial power house. It clearly has nought to do with Merkel’s disastrous leadership over so many years.
I often wonder why Germany is widely regarded as the de facto CEO of the European Union.
German elections 2017: Angela Merkel wins fourth term but AfD makes gains – as it happened
"Here's a summary of where we are so far:
Angela Merkel is set for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor after her centre right CDU/CSU won a projected 33% of the vote in federal elections, making it the largest party in the Bundestag with an estimated 218 seats.
The Christian Democrats’ score, sharply down on the 41% of the vote it collected in the previous 2013 elections, was widely seen as disappointing and is likely to leave Merkel diminished on the domestic political stage.
Her main rivals (and outgoing coalition partners), Martin Schulz’s Social Democrat SPD, crashed to just over 20% and a projected 138 seats. Within an hour of the first exit poll, Schulz confirmed statements by other senior party figures that the SPD would not renew its “grand coalition” with the CDU but head into opposition.
The far-right, anti-immigration AfD made a historic breakthrough, winning 13.5% of the vote and a projected 87 seats and becoming the first overtly nationalist party to sit in the Bundestag in 60 years. The party’s performance marks a major shift in Germany’s postwar politics that is likely to produce a very different tone and dynamic inside the Bundestag.
The SPD’s decision to become the official parliamentary opposition leaves the only feasible coalition for Merkel a three-party tie up between the CDU/CSU, the pro-business FDP party who scored 10%, and the Greens, who won 9%: the so-called black-yellow-green Jamaica coalition, which has worked at state level but never been tried in federal government. This could prove tricky to negotiate.
Merkel said in her post-election speech that the CDU had hoped for a better result but had faced – referring to the 2015 migrant crisis – an “extraordinary challenge” and had still managed to remain Germany’s largest party. She pledged to listen to AfD voters and win back those she could with “good politics”.
The AfD promised “constructive opposition” in parliament but the Greens have already complained that “Nazis have returned to parliament”.
During the traditional televised leaders’ debate, Schulz said the EU and the new German government should “not cede anything” to Britain over Brexit, including the two-year transition period Theresa May said she wants, and the FDP’s Christian Lindner dealt a blow to French president Emmanuel Macron’s hopes for eurozone reform, confirming that the party was opposed to fiscal transfers within the zone.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/li...d-live-updates
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,"
Clearly. Anyone who imagines the purpose of politicians is to give people the things they vote for, is deluded, deplorable, or deranged. The extreme left calling centre parties like the AfD "far right" is joke... we all know it's the sinister statists using a cryptonym for evil to try and make people who vote (off message) for what they want, pariahs.
lol, you really don't have a clue, 'Nemo' (sic).
Yep, even the center-right Christian Democrats do not consider a coalition with the AfD, because they consider them a danger to Germany's liberal democracy.
The AfD has attracted protest voters from across the spectrum, not sure I agree that they are, as labelled by their opponents, "undemocratic", but there certainly is a lot of extremists among them, as noted earlier.
I don't recall a 3-party coalition government in Federal Germany's history, there is already talk about new elections.
Last edited by stroller; 25-09-2017 at 08:51 PM.
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