Germany after Merkel

Stability and growth are a heady mix. This was precisely what Chancellor Angela Merkel provided to Germany in her 16 years at the helm. She’s exiting soon with her head held high, but the election to find a replacement for her has not decisively favoured her conservative Christian Democratic Union. A slight shift in favour of center-left Social Democrats was evident in the counting and its nominee Olaf Scholz seemed to be taking the upper hand over CDU’s Armin Laschet. Germany is used to having coalition governments and having even a grand coalition of principal rivals joining hands under Merkel. This had meant a set-back to the Social Democrats under the huge Merkel aura. Yet, Germans now seemingly want to give a chance for the centre-left to form the next government.
Angela Merkel’s popularity remains undiminished – a rare credit to someone who led a democracy for quite a long tenure and this is reflected in the fact that ‘change’ was not the ‘mantra’ for the contending sides in the present poll campaign; rather, continuity a la the Merkel way was the promise from the Social Democrats too. Reunited Germany began regaining its powerful presence after 1990 – with the weak East Germany joining hands with West Germany and the Wall that separated them having unceremoniously been pulled down. The age of ideology gave way to an era of pragmatism; and these three decades were years of progress for Germany. Under Merkel, it emerged as the strongest nation in Europe, edging past the UK and France when unemployment was at its lowest under her tenure. The additional bonus she provided was political stability, granting the nation a single-minded attention to economic growth. Merkel displayed the good side of democracy and she, by nature, was a unifying figure all along. This meant the scope for confrontation was less. By sharing power with Social Democrats, she made sure there was little scope for dissent. This unity too worked wonders for the nation.
Democracy’s problem is, it’s not always that the right kind of leader comes to the helm. Many turn out to be weak-kneed. Autocrats, rather, have the cutting edge. China and Russia are going strong by virtue of the strong party apparatus in the case of the first and the powerful persona of President Putin in the second. India, rather, is into an era of slow growth, the stress here being more on freebies and compromises to win votes. Growth suffers. For sure, Angela Merkel steered Germany on the path of democracy coupled with progress and stability.