BERLIN • Germany's Christian Democrats elected Mr Armin Laschet as chairman yesterday, aiming to unify their divided party behind a centrist who they hope can succeed Dr Angela Merkel as chancellor when she steps down after federal elections in September.
Mr Laschet, 59, premier of Germany's most populous state - North Rhine-Westphalia - and the self-styled Merkel continuity candidate, won a run-off ballot of party delegates against arch-conservative Friedrich Merz.
Dr Merkel, 66, Europe's predominant politician and a consistent winner with German voters since taking office in 2005, said she will not run for chancellor again. Since she stepped down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in December 2018, the party has struggled to find a suitable successor.
Mr Laschet, who beat Mr Merz by 521 votes to 466, said he would do everything he could to ensure the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), could "stick together through this year".
They could then work towards making sure that "the next chancellor in the federal elections will be from the (CDU/CSU) union", he said in his victory speech.
Yesterday's digital election will be confirmed by a postal vote, with legally binding results expected on Jan 22.
Dr Merkel said last year that Mr Laschet had "the tools" to run for chancellor, the closest she has come to endorsing anyone.
In his candidacy speech, Mr Laschet said the next leader's task would be to earn trust for himself and the party and emphasised his ability to integrate all of its wings.
"I keep hearing that you also have to be able to polarise. I say, 'No, you don't have to,'" he told an empty convention hall, from which the congress was livestreamed to delegates due to the pandemic. "'Woulda, coulda, shoulda' is not politics. You have to master the tools of centrist politics, the ability to unite."
But after his narrow run-off victory, Mr Laschet must move swiftly to unite the party or risk eroding its support and leaving it in a weaker position to negotiate a coalition should it - as currently predicted - come first in September's elections.
By tradition, the CDU chairman is usually - though not always - the chancellor candidate for the CDU and CSU, and the conservative bloc is on course to win September's federal ballot.
However, polls show Mr Markus Soeder, the CSU leader, is the conservative most favoured by voters. Some CDU lawmakers want dynamic Health Minister Jens Spahn to run for chancellor, though he backed Mr Laschet for the party leadership.
Mr Soeder was one of the first to congratulate Mr Laschet and said he was looking forward to working with him. Opinion polls give Dr Merkel's conservative bloc around 36 per cent of votes, followed by the Greens on around 20 per cent and the Social Democrats on 16 per cent.
CDU sources say Mr Laschet, a centrist, would be well suited to negotiating a possible coalition government with the Greens. Green Party leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck said Mr Laschet must redefine the CDU after Dr Merkel, as well as set the course to modernise the economy in an environmentally sustainable way.
Dr Merkel was succeeded in 2018 as party leader by her protege Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who struggled in the role and said last year she would step down.
REUTERS
