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In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
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Continuing a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Angela Merkel...
Angela Merkel is the head of Germany’s centre right coalition and is thus Chancellor of the Federal German Republic.
Merkel was born in Communist East Germany nine years after the Second World War ended. A clearly talented girl she grew up to obtain a doctorate in quantum chemistry at the University of Leipzig. She then worked as a researcher until the collapse of Communism in 1990 when she was elected to the German Bundestag (Parliament) as a Christian Democratic Union MP in the first free elections held in East Germany since 1932. She then worked as the Minister for Women and Youth for three years before taking over the Environment Ministry.
However in 1998 the Christian Democratic Union and its party leader Merkel’s mentor Helmet Kohl were defeated by Gerhald Schroder’s left wing SPD. Despite the CDU’s reputation as a male-dominated, Catholic and family values orientated party, Merkel as a divorced, Protestant woman won the party leadership and thus became Head of the Opposition.
However she could not find the support within her party to be their challenger in the 2002 election in which the SPD managed to scrap a majority thus Merkel had to wait till 2005 to run for Chancellor. This time after a rocky campaign Merkel was the one who managed to gain the most votes but she did not win enough seats to form a coalition with her traditional coalition partners so a grand coalition was formed with the SPD with Merkel as Chancellor.
After a fairly successful term during which she cut both VAT and the top rate of income tax as well as instituting reforms to reduce unemployment the electorate rewarded Merkel with a increased majority allowing her to form a coalition with the more suitable Free Democratic Party, a centre right classical liberal party.
In October 2010 Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, declared that multiculturalism had “utterly failed” and “we feel attached to the Christian concept of mankind, that is what defines us”, sentiments that David Cameron has recently echoed.
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