Opinion

Merkel should stand tall

September 25, 2017

ANGELA Merkel’s victory in the German election was bittersweet. She begins her fourth term as chancellor knowing that her country’s politics have been transformed alarmingly by the rise of the blatantly Islamophobic Alternatif für Deutschland (AfD).

Thanks to Germany’s proportional representation system, the AfD, which won just under 13 percent of the vote, has gone from having no seats in the 709-member parliament to holding 94 and becoming the third largest party. Though Merkel’s Christian Democrats won the support of a third of the electorate, it was in fact the party’s worst result since 1949. No wonder therefore that in the victory celebrations, Merkel only managed once or twice to force a smile. Much of the time she looked grim.

But in actual fact she ought to have been wearing a big grin. Though in domestic political terms she has suffered a setback, internationally, not least in the Muslim world, there is widespread celebration that this humane and visionary politician has survived a challenge which pundits were once predicting could see the destruction of her political career.

When every other EU member state was jibbing at accepting even modest numbers of refugees from the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, Merkel took the extraordinary step of welcoming and giving asylum to almost a million of these desperate people. Unfortunately Germany’s example, despite edicts from the EU Commission in Brussels, has hardly been followed. It is a matter of shame that far from opening their arms to the refugees of conflict, many member states have either covertly or overtly produced barriers, finding all sorts of good reasons to ignore their obligations in terms of common humanity.

Germany is a conservative country and Merkel, undemonstrative and not over-burdened with charisma, seems to represent all the solid, decent values which underpin the German sense of order and rectitude. It was therefore all the more astonishing when Merkel responded as she did to the refugee crisis. She took a major social as well as political risk. The arrival of a million foreigners would be a strain for any country, even one as well organized as Germany.Yet the evidence is that Germans and their system have coped remarkably well. The majority of refugees are well on their way to integrating in German society.

The racists AfD of course has focused on the disgusting behavior of a tiny majority of refugees, who have repaid the generous welcome they have been given by committing robberies and sex crimes. The handful who have been involved in terrorism smuggled themselves in among the real refugees. The AfD’s pernicious argument can easily be stood on its head. If you took a million distressed and traumatized people anywhere in the world and planted them down in another country with another culture and another language, it is likely that there would be the same, if not greater irresponsibility than has been seen among refugees in Germany.

Merkel’s courage and strong humanitarian principles have already earned her an honored place in history. She did what had to be done when others thought it would be impossible. By the same token, those voters who sought to punish her, should hang their heads in shame and be rightly alarmed that they have permitted a mob of Muslim-hating bigots to pollute the debates in their parliament.


September 25, 2017
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