Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel reelected chairman of Christian Democratic Union

Germany saw about 890,000 asylum-seekers arrive previous year, many after Merkel decided in September 2015 to let in migrants who were stuck in Hungary.

“Not all of the 900,000 refugees who arrived past year will be able to stay”, Merkel said.

The interior and justice ministries could not immediately give figures on any forced marriages or honor killings among the record 890,000 people from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere who arrived in Germany a year ago.

There is concern within CDU rank and file, because Merkel has said she “will stand again, without saying how she will change her policies in the future”, Hans Pistner from the Thuringia regional government told regional broadcaster MDR. But today, Merkel came up with the statement that this “should not and must not be repeated”. She stressed that deportations have to be enforced, and that a significant portion of arrivals won’t be allowed to stay. Humanitarian groups have praised Germany’s intake of refugees.

On Tuesday, Merkel won reelection as chairwoman of the CDU party, a position she has held since 2000.

Ms Merkel promised there would not be a repeat of 2015’s migrant influx.

In her speech to the almost 1,000 delegates at the annual convention of the party, Merkel had committed her party to a tough federal election campaign in the coming year. Her lowest was in 2004, when she was approved by 88.4 percent.

The anti-Islamic nationalist party AfD is gaining steam leading up to the election. At the last general election it fell short of the five-percent threshold to ensure representation.

But other social media posters felt Merkel’s flip-flop, which aligns her with official party policy, was a stunt done in the hopes of being re-elected. “In this situation, in which the world appears to be coming apart, to ensure that Europe does not emerge even weaker from the crises than it went”, Merkel said.

She deplored the failure of the global community to alleviate the suffering in Syria’s besieged city of Aleppo, calling it a “disgrace”.

It followed a shock speech in August when she said: “From my point of view, a completely covered woman has nearly no chance of integrating herself in Germany”. That didn’t prevent several critics from taking the floor to criticize her for driving voters to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany.

“If you don’t have borders and don’t respect the law, you’re not really going to have a country anymore, and that’s why they are having big problems within Europe”, she said.