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AP file photo German Chancellor Olaf Scholz waits for the arrival of the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023.
AFP-Jiji
10:00 JST, February 14, 2023
BERLIN (AFP-Jiji) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats suffered a heavy setback in a regional poll in Berlin on Sunday, falling behind the opposition conservatives in the capital for the first time in over two decades.
While the Berlin vote turned on local issues, the disappointing loss comes as Scholz faces widespread criticism for his hesitant military support for Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion last year.
In a court-ordered rerun of the election in 2021, the chancellor’s party slipped to their worst postwar result in the capital, where they have held the mayor’s office since 2001.
The conservative CDU, in opposition in the city and in the federal parliament, surged to around 28%, up from 18%.
Berlin, one of the country’s 16 federal states, was ordered by courts to return to the ballot boxes after the 2021 election was found not to meet basic democratic standards amid widespread voting issues.
The outcome of the rerun puts a question mark over the continuation of the coalition between the Social Democrats, Greens and far-left Linke party.
“If we have an opportunity for an SPD-led government, then we will try to organize a stable majority for it,” incumbent Social Democrat Mayor Franziska Giffey told ZDF after the first estimates.
But early figures suggested her junior coalition partner the Greens could finish ahead of the Social Democrats with around 18.5% of the vote. The Linke party’s share of the vote was meanwhile estimated at around 13%.
Giffey and the Social Democrats seem to have been penalized by voters following violent scenes in the capital over the New Year, with revelers targeting the emergency services with fireworks in neighborhoods with a large immigrant population.
The conservative opposition accused Berlin’s administration of failing to control the situation and sparked a citywide debate over integration.
The election was also marked by discontent over rising rental prices in the capital and disputes over transport policy.
The result of the elections reflects the Social Democrats’ struggles nationally, as Scholz’s government — in power for just over a year — wrestles with rampant inflation and the fallout of the war in Ukraine.
The difficulties for Scholz’s coalition with the Greens and the liberal FDP have been to the benefit of opposition parties.
Along with the conservative CDU, the far-right AfD increased its share of the vote slightly to around 9% in Sunday’s rerun, according to the estimates.
The rerun in Berlin is only the second time in German postwar history that a state election has been declared invalid, after irregularities were reported in a vote in Hamburg in 1991.
The organization of the 2021 election on the same day as a national vote, a local housing referendum and the Berlin marathon had led to widespread logistical problems.
Ballot papers got stuck in traffic as roads were closed for the race, with lines forming outside polling stations struggling to process votes.
