Frankfurt: Germany headed to the unexpected period on Monday after the close election saw the two main parties claim the right to lead the biggest economy of Europe, leaving questions about who would succeed with the width.
The partial results on the narrow early Monday placed the Central Left Social Democrats (SPD) in the lead at 25-26 percent, followed by the CDU-CSU-CSU block right Merkel with a record score of around 24 percent.
The green party is placed third with around 14 percent.
SPD Chancellor Candidate, Minister of Finance and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and rival Armin Laschet from the Merkel Conservative Camp respectively claimed the mandate to rule, carry out the race for potential coalition partners.
For the country used for political stability after 16 years of Merkel’s steady leadership, the coming weeks and months promised to be a rocky trip.
Western allies oversee carefully, aware that domestic preoccupation can blunt the German role in the international stage and create a leadership vacancy in Europe.
Laschet, 60, and Scholz, 63, both said their goal was to have a new government in a place before Christmas.
Citizens “want changes in government,” Scholz said, who run a error-free campaign that threw it as a safe pair of hands, sharply contrasting with a series of gaaffet.
“Scholz wants to be in power, so is Laschet.
Poker game starts: Who holds a better card?” Asked the best-selling Bild newspaper.
In a broken political landscape of the post-merkel era, the most likely results will become a three-way alliance, which ended the tradition after the two-party coalition government.
Scholz and Laschet will look for Green and the Liberal FDP Party, Pro-business (11.5 percent) to make numbers needed for the majority of parliament.
But the Kingmaker is not a natural bed, deviating strongly on problems such as tax increases and public investment in climate protection.
Green Chancellor Annalena Baerbock – whose parties hope to do better with the climate crisis that is a concern of the peak voters this year – remains vaguely about the preferred bond, saying it’s time for “new home” in Germany.
FDP leader Christian Lindner suggested sitting with the first green before starting exploration talks with two larger parties to speed up the process.
“Europe is waiting for Germany to have a new government,” he said on Sunday night.
Lindner has signaled a preference for the “Jamaican” coalition with CDU-CSU and Green – named after a black, green and yellow party – but has not ruled out the constellation of “traffic lights” with SPD and the green vegetables.
Laschet also aroused a sense of urgency on Sunday, said German duty as the G7 club president of rich countries next year meant that the country needs to have actions that can take action.
“The new government must immediately come to the office,” he said, “Definitely before Christmas”.
Both SPD and CDU-CSU also do not want the repetition of the “Grand Coalition” right left which has been displayed in three of the four Merkel governments.
And no party will work with distant alternatives to Germany (AFD), whose value fell to 10.5 percent from nearly 13 percent in the last election in 2017 as the topic of pets, immigration, falling from the agenda.
The leftmost LINDE party also lost support and fooled on the edge of the five percent threshold needed to enter the parliament.
Until complex negotiations are completed, Merkel will remain in its role in the management capacity.
If talks take place outside December 17, Merkel will overtake the record of Helmut Kohl as a Chancellor that serves Germany.
Merkel is still the most popular German politician, which voluntary departure marks the watershed moment of 83 million people.
But the risk of his inheritance was tarnished by the poor CDU-CSU showed in Sunday’s election, which saw the block fall below 30 percent for the first time in the history of seven decades.
In a painful illustration of the fall of CDU, the constituency of Baltic Beach Merkel – which he had held since 1990 – was taken by social democrats.
At the CDU headquarters on Sunday, Alfons Thesing, 84, put his finger on the problem.
“It hurts that Merkel no longer exists,” he told AFP.
Merkel, 67, is likely to be missed outside the German border too, after helping to direct the European Union through years of turbulence which includes the financial crisis, migrant flow, Brexit and Pandemic Coronavirus.
While all the main German parties are pro-EU, there is no successor to its candidates who can match their political gravity.