Angela Merkel to seek 4th term as Germany’s chancellor

“After 11 years, the decision about a fourth candidacy is anything but trivial for the country, the party and for me personally”.

“I am also part of the people, not just the AfD”, she said.

The election is next year, and Angela Merkel conceded in her announcement that it will be a hard race. The German leader oversaw Europe’s absorption previous year of the biggest influx of migrants since World War II, having only just steered the bloc through the euro zone crisis. Calling her “outstanding” and his closest worldwide partner, Obama all but endorsed her to run again while saying that any weakening of the trans-Atlantic alliance would lead to a “meaner, harsher and tougher world”.

And then there’s the election of Donald Trump.

Since coming to power in 2005, she has acquired a stature commensurate with the power of her country, Europe’s largest economy and most populous nation, with about 81 million residents.

Germany’s top selling Bild daily, usually a strong Merkel defender, had some tough advice for her, predicting the looming campaign “will be her hardest yet” and decided by mainstream voters, “not editorials in The New York Times”. The leader of the Free Democrats, Christian Lindner, criticized Merkel’s decision, saying the CDU is apparently “playing its last trump and doesn’t even know whether this step will help it”.

Merkel said she has a clear view of the challenges she faces and hopes to be a unifying figure. For the Germans, with their history of division and dictatorship, a wild card in the White House is far more alarming than it is in Britain.

NELSON: She added today is the appropriate time.

Almost 60% of Germans surveyed in a recent poll said they wanted Ms Merkel to run for office again, said Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling agency.

Mrs Merkel has been less conciliatory towards Mr Obama’s successor than most other world leaders.

Visiting Berlin last week, President Barack Obama praised Merkel, who has voiced support for the U.S. leader’s priorities on climate change, Russian sanctions and economic reform.

A survey Sunday showed that 33% of German voters backed Merkel’s conservatives, down nine points from the last national election in 2013. “There’s also lot of uncertainty with regard to Brexit”.

How about the wider world?

Amid such a shift to the new more extreme right in the Western world, some commentators have dubbed Merkel ironically as the “anti-Trump”. For the last eight years the special relationship has been between Washington and Berlin.

The paper also pointed to problems at the global level, including increasing Russian assertiveness in the East and a possibly more distant America under a Trump presidency.

Ms. Merkel’s role as a beacon of liberal values may also be dented by the power of populism elsewhere in Europe, whose union has been thrown into ever greater doubt since Britain, the Continent’s leading military power, voted in June to leave the European Union.

“Germany can’t afford a further term in office by Angela Merkel”, AfD chairwomen Frauke Petry tweeted on Sunday. Prosaically, the answer probably lies somewhere in between. As many as six parties could win seats in next year’s election, and most experts expect the Christian Democrats to win the most. Chances are, if she wins again, she’ll need another Grand Alliance to remain in office.

The nationalist Alterative for Germany party, or AfD, could prove to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to her re-election.