Berlin — “It is a disaster.” Those were the words of a forlorn-looking German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday evening as he addressed his party in the seconds after regional elections handed his center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) their second and third electoral drubbings in a month. The elections in the north-eastern region of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the city of Berlin not only reopen the barely healed wounds from the Saxony-Anhalt election on September 6, but have plunged the party to new depths of unpopularity. Voters are abandoning the CDU –– the party of Angela Merkel and Konrad Adenauer –– in their droves, for the far-right, pro-Russia and anti-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD has once again demonstrated it is a major political force in this country.
