German Chancellor Angela Merkel returned Friday to the scene of deadly flooding in the west of the country in a bid to shore up support for her embattled party before this month’s national election.
Since the July disaster put crisis management and climate change back at the top of the agenda, Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their unpopular candidate, Armin Laschet, have been haemorrhaging support.
With the September 26 vote fast approaching, the outgoing Merkel checked in on the flood-stricken village of Altenahr in Rhineland-Palatinate state, and will view two inundated towns in Laschet’s own neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia on Sunday.
After touring the rubble-strewn roads of Altenahr where the vast majority of homes are still uninhabitable, Merkel acknowledged residents’ trauma.
“When you are here you get a small sense of the mortal fear many people had in the night of the flooding, who had to wait it out on top of or under their roofs,” she said.
“We will not forget you, and the next government will pick up where we left off” to ensure public aid reaches the victims, she pledged.
Merkel, who will retire from politics when a new government is in place, had made a well-received visit in the immediate aftermath of the deluge, offering billions of euros in federal aid to rebuild ravaged infrastructure.
The appearance stood in marked contrast with a politically calamitous stop by Laschet in what is now widely seen as a fateful moment in the erstwhile frontrunner’s campaign.
As President Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave a sombre speech mourning the floods’ 181 victims, the CDU leader was caught on camera behind him joking with local officials.
– ‘Put foot in it’ –
“Merkel went there and listened and had the right expression and the right gestures and Laschet managed to put his foot in it,” political scientist Ursula Muench told AFP.
She noted that after Merkel’s 16 years in office, her shadow looms large over the race — particularly as Laschet’s chief rival, Social Democratic Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, also tries to present himself as her rightful heir.
His party is now polling 25 percent, five points up on Laschet’s conservatives, according to a new survey for public broadcaster ARD.
The Christian Democrats are now encouraging as many joint appearances as possible between Merkel and Laschet, who will accompany her on Sunday.
However, the visit carries some political risk as emotions are still running high in the stricken region.
In the village of Dernau, clean-up volunteer Christine Jahn complained this week about red tape holding up tranches of a pledged 30 billion euros ($36 billion) in federal and state aid.
“I want less babbling and more getting on with it, so that the money arrives without bureaucracy,” the 66-year-old told AFP.
Public anger has also focused on a failure to sufficiently warn vulnerable residents or rush them to safety before the waters surged through their community.
– Flippant response? –
The catastrophe at the same time renewed the focus on climate change, which 80 percent of Germans say they want more political action to mitigate, according to a poll for broadcaster RTL.
A major international study last month found that man-made global warming made the deadly floods in Germany as well as Belgium up to nine times more likely.
In the Ahr and Erft regions of Germany, 93 millimetres (3.6 inches) of rain fell in a single day at the height of the crisis.
In the immediate aftermath, Laschet drew criticism for seemingly contradictory statements in a television interview on the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.
Asked whether he thought the government had made mistakes on the issue, Laschet said it would be wrong to “change policies just because of one day” in what sounded to many critics like a flippant response to the disaster.
All eyes are now on Laschet, whose CDU has shed around 14 points in support since he became party leader in January and is still on a downward slide, to see whether he can find his footing again before election day.
