By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
@DPA.
Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor by the German parliament Tuesday in a second round of voting, after failing to secure an absolute majority in an earlier round.
Merz received 325 votes in the second round of voting on Tuesday.
He needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes in a secret ballot, but only received 310 votes in the first round, well short of the 328 seats held by his coalition.
Because the balloting was secret, it was unknown who had withheld support from Merz in the first round and whether they were dissenters from his own conservative camp — made up of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) — or members of their junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD). Merz’s conservatives won Germany’s general election in February, with 28.5 percent of the vote, but it still required at least one coalition partner to form a majority government.
After the vote, the 69-year-old headed to the nearby Bellevue Palace to be formally nominated by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Later, Merz will return to the historic Reichstag building in the heart of Berlin to take the oath of office to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since the end of World War II.
On Monday, the CDU/CSU reached an agreement with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) , which secured 16.4 percent in the elections after the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s government last year.
Their agreement has mapped out plans to revive growth, such as reducing corporate taxes and lowering energy prices. It is also promising strong support for Ukraine as it battles to repel Russia’s invasion, and higher military spending.
The new chancellor’s in-tray would also include the confrontational trade policy of US President Donald Trump and domestic issues such as the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
A longtime rival of former chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz took a hiatus from politics shortly after a bitter party leadership contest in the early 2000s. Since taking the reins of the CDU in 2022, he has shifted the conservatives away from Merkel’s more centrist policies. Despite his party’s election win, he was seen as an unpopular leader, criticized on matters of both style and substance.