Crunch elections for Germany at perhaps the most pivotal moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Back then, it was about making a success of reunification. Now comes a reckoning over the German model that ensued. Under threat, the kind of global free trade that powers Germany’s export-driven economy. Instead it’s Trump’s tariffs, a Russian aggression that’s inching closer in not-so-far off Ukraine and an aging population that needs to replenish its workforce, but doesn’t want more migrants.
Seizing on the mood of a nation in recession, the far-right AfD which polls suggest could finish second behind the Christian Democrats. With the U-S vice-president last Friday passing up a chance to meet the incumbent center-left chancellor, instead seeing Weidel on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, voters wonder that the usual warnings of foreign election meddling come this time more from the United States or from usual suspect Russia.
The pressure’s on, and in a nation where lead candidates know that they can’t bash their rivals too hard, after all they know that come Monday morning when the ballots are counted, they might have to call them for coalition-building, could this election be different? If so, just how?
Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.
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