The CDU rank and file will elect the next party leader for the first time

The German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, will hand over the renewal of its presidency to the militancy, under the impact of the defeat suffered in the last general elections and in a third attempt to find solid leadership. For the first time in the history of the party led by Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Merkel, it will be their militants – some 405,000, according to 2020 data – who will elect their next boss.

It will be done in a somewhat complex process, as announced by the outgoing leader, Armin Laschet, after the meeting of the party’s presidency. It will include two rounds of voting and it will close with the ratification in a federal congress, on January 21 and 22, since its statutes establish that the election of the presidency belongs to the 1,001 delegates of the party – an emblematic figure in the CDU-.

There are no official applicants, although if an unofficial list of five names, all of them men and from North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populated “Land” in the country and from which Laschet also comes. The list of repeat offenders is Merkel’s historic rival, the right-wing Friedrich Merz, Health Minister Jens Spahn, and foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen. The three have already tried, without success, to reach the presidency of the party.

Party apparatus

Ambitions to the position are attributed to the head of the parliamentary group, Ralph Brinkhaus, and Carsten Linnemann, who scored a first moral success, seeing the consultation with the militancy, of which he was a defender, prosper, against the opinion against the apparatus of the match.

The victory of the consultation, an unprecedented formula in the CDU, won the game at the conference of party leaders of the 326 electoral districts held last Saturday. A vast majority of local representatives spoke out for the involvement of the grassroots as a regenerating formula.

The centrist Laschet was elected the new head of the party in January and, in March, he also prevailed as a joint candidate for the Chancellery of the conservative bloc, made up of the CDU and the Bavarian Social Christian Union (CSU). The CDU / CSU sank in the September 26 general election by 24.1%, its record low in a national election. Laschet assumed his responsibility as a candidate and offered to coordinate the renovation in full of the cupola of the party.

But the crisis of the CDU comes from before the brief phase in the presidency of this candidate. His election followed a long battle between rightists and centrists.; it represented a new attempt to replace the continuist, after the failure of the one represented by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, also loyal to Merkel.

Kramp-Karrenbauer had assumed the presidency in 2018 from the position of general secretary. She was the favorite to succeed Merkel, who left the head of a CDU that year weakened by successive regional defeats and he announced that he would not run for another term as chancellor either. Merkel’s theoretical natural successor threw in the towel a year later, questioned in her leadership. Laschet also failed to establish himself as chief.

Rhodes on vacation

The new relay is planned in several phases. Candidates must first be finalized. Afterwards, applicants will be given the option to present themselves to the bases, either in digital format or at local conferences. Between mid-December and first fortnight of January the voting will take place, which will be by mail and in two rounds of voting, unless there is no need for a tiebreaker.

The idea is to come to Congress with a single candidate, who will be ratified by Congress, and thereby avoid a new edition of the struggle between centrism and rightism that has dominated the search for a successor to Merkel.

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December will be a month rich in renovations. Not only is the election of Olaf Scholz expected for that month, around the 6th as new chancellor after 16 years of “era Merkel”. His Social Democratic Party (SPD), the most voted in the elections with 25.7% of the votes, must also elect a new leadership.

Its co-president Norbert Walter-Borjans, who has held the position since 2019 together with Saskia Esken, announced a few days ago that he will not run for reelection in the party congress, to be held in the same week that Scholz will presumably become Chancellor in league with Greens and Liberals.