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Updated Tuesday, September 29, 2009 9:24 am TWN, By Deborah Cole, AFP

Merkel wins new term to lead Germany out of slump

BERLIN -- Chancellor Angela Merkel swept to a second mandate in Germany's election Sunday at the head of a new centre-right alliance she says will steer Europe's powerhouse economy back to robust growth.

"We have achieved our goal of gaining a stable majority for a new government," a beaming Merkel, Germany's first female leader and the only chancellor from the ex-communist east, told cheering supporters in Berlin.

"I want to be the chancellor of all Germans, so that things improve for our country."

Preliminary results showed the 55-year-old Merkel's conservative Christian Union bloc (CDU/CSU) as the clear winners with about 33.5 percent of the vote.

Although the wildly popular Merkel savoured her victory, the daily Tagesspiegel said the score, the right's worst since 1949, marked a "black eye" for the chancellor.

But the night was a debacle for the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Merkel's loveless "grand coalition", who plummeted to 23 percent in what was a post-war low.

"There is no other way of saying it, this is a bitter defeat," Merkel's SPD rival, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told dejected backers.

The SPD, Germany's oldest political outfit, will be banished to the opposition benches after 11 years in government.

Merkel's favoured partners, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), captured nearly 15 percent, meaning they will return to government for the first time since 1998.

Under Germany's complex electoral arithmetic, their combined score of about 48 percent will almost certainly be enough to put them over the top.

A centre-right coalition has governed Germany for 28 of the 60 years since the post-war republic was founded.

FDP leader Guido Westerwelle now aims to become vice-chancellor and the country's first openly gay foreign minister.

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September 29, 2009 ich@

You forgot to mention the Pirate Party with respectable 2% ...

September 29, 2009 pari-90@

Let's see, what they are going to change and whether they'll keep their promises & surely SPD is a real loser in this election but there is hope for next time always.

September 29, 2009 anastasiareisler@

It is important to begin by saying that I am a German student, although a very good, but despite of this fact I'm afraid a little bit about the future and I hope that the new black-yellow coalition push Germany up and it will be better again, so that everybody there can think optimism about the future. Moreover last Sunday was a meaningful day for every German because of the election and I vote, too. And for the 18 million Germans who didn’t vote I just want to say that they themselves are guilty and they won’t have a reason to cry and complain about the policity. To sum up, democracy means rule of the people, but this can’t work if the nation won’t accept the power. Dedicate to Mr. M ;)



	Angela Merkel, German Chancellor and leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) reacts after first exit polls in the German general election (Bundestagswahl) at party headquarters in Berlin, Sunday, Sept. 27. (Reuters) Enlarge Photo


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