{"id":24680,"date":"2018-12-07T16:22:53","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T16:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24680"},"modified":"2018-12-07T16:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T16:22:53","slug":"german-cdu-elects-kramp-karrenbauer-as-new-party-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24680","title":{"rendered":"German CDU elects Kramp-Karrenbauer as new party leader"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Chancellor Angela Merkel will be replaced by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.<\/p>\n

The choice was made by 999 voting delegates at a party congress in German city of Hamburg on Friday, the day Merkel was seen off with a nine-minute standing ovation after 18 years as the party chief.<\/p>\n

Friday’s two-round vote came weeks after Merkel, 64, decided in October not to seek a re-election to the post, but expressed her readiness to stay on as Germany’s chancellor for the remaining three years of her term.<\/p>\n

Kramp-Karrenbauer – a Merkel protege – defeated Friedrich Merz, a Merkel rival who has questioned the constitutional guarantee of asylum to all “politically persecuted” in the second round with 517 votes against 482.<\/p>\n

In the first round, Kramp-Karrenbauer won 450 votes, Merz took 392 votes and Health Minister Jens Spahn<\/span>\u00a0was eliminated with 157 votes.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Merz lost to Merkel too. In Friday’s vote, he was backed by CDU members tired of Merkel’s consensual politics, including party veteran Wolfgang Schaeuble.<\/p>\n

Merz, 63, took clear positions that appealed to rank-and-file party members hungry for a more clearly defined party after 13 years under Merkel as chancellor. He wanted tax cuts, a stronger EU and a more robust approach to challenging the far right.<\/p>\n

Kramp-Karrenbauer<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ahead of the party congress, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, a Merkel ally, said, “I am convinced that with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer we have the best chance of the CDU winning an election.”<\/p>\n

She would be the most dangerous candidate to face the centre-left Social Democrats and the ecologist Greens, he added.<\/p>\n

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s trump card was her record as a former state premier in Saarland, where she led a broad coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats, alliance-building skills useful in Germany’s fractured political landscape.<\/p>\n

The 56-year-old has differentiated herself from Merkel on social and foreign policy by voting in favour of quotas for women on corporate boards, which was opposed by Merkel, and by taking a tougher line on Russia.<\/p>\n

She told Reuters news agency last week Europe and the United States should consider blockading Russian ships over the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n

But on what lies ahead for the CDU, Kramp-Karrenbauer said, “I have no particular recipe.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chancellor Angela Merkel will be replaced by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as the leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. The choice was made by 999 voting delegates at a party congress in German city of Hamburg on Friday, the day Merkel was seen off with a nine-minute standing ovation after 18 years as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}