The leader of the CDU Armir Laschet received, in the late night between 19 and 20 April, the support of the federal executive committee of the party, with 31 votes out of 46, in favor of his candidacy for the chancellery. This decision should put an end to the bitter duel between the leaders of the CDU and the CSU and today force Markus Söder, the charismatic Bavarian leader of the Union’s “younger sister” party, to retire. Söder said he would have retired had he not been the chosen one in the upper echelons of the CDU. But the leader of the CSU is unpredictable and extremely ambitious: the CDU and CSU and the voters in Germany remain in suspense awaiting the resignation.
The leaders of the CDU finally decided to support their leader, despite having lost the tug-of-war with Söder in terms of polls for the favorites to the chancellery.
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The executive committee votes in favor of Laschet were 31, among which the former president of the CDU Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the president of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble but not Peter Altmaier minister of the economy and Merkel’s right hand man, against nine for Söder and six abstained.
Laschet’s resignation, in case of a negative vote, was a risk that the party could not afford after the resignations of Angela Merkel in 2018 and those of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2020, which weakened and split it.
The internal struggle in the CDU / CSU for the chancellery seat, which opened after the void left by Angela Merkel and the poor performance of the polls in view of the general elections on September 26, has further torn the hold on the electorate of the Union Cdu / Csu, already put in serious difficulties for the management of the third wave of the coronavirus and the slow start of the vaccination campaign.