German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed her decision to run for a fourth term, vowing explicitly to take on the forces of anti-establishment populism currently sweeping the West.
“We are facing struggles in Europe and internationally for our values and our interests and, simply put, for our way of life,” Merkel told reporters at the headquarters of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Sunday night, Euractiv has reported.
“This election will be more difficult than any before it, at least not since national reunification [in 1990]” she said, pointing to a strong “polarisation of our society.”
Merkel, currently the EU’s longest-serving leader, said this had played a part in her decision to stand again as she felt many leaders were looking to her as a source of stability in “distinctly difficult, even insecure times.”
But on referring to the suggestion by some commentators that she should be considered the new “leader of the free world,” she said she was “indeed honoured, but I also find it grotesque and even absurd.”
IDK, maybe she wouldn't be in this position if she hadn't sided with the banksters in driving the Greeks into abject poverty, forcing German surplus savings and output on the rest of Europe to the detriment of their economies, and taking in every rapefugee she could find. I'm sure it will all work out. /sarc