I intend to stay in power until 2021: Angela Merkel

Berlin, February 12: Coalition government hopes to give a new ray to Germany’s new government. While forming the new government, German leader Angela Merkel has urged the young ministers to be the part of the ministry. She has also said that she intends to stay in power until 2021, the end of the legislative period, as long as the Social Democrats (SPD) is on board.

“I am one of those people who stick to what they promise,” Merkel said. Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc reached a deal for a new government with the SPD on Wednesday, setting the stage for a fourth term as chancellor for Merkel, but the SPD’s 463,000 party members must still sign off on the pact in a special ballot. The vote is expected to take until early March to complete.

Merkel also described leaving the finance minister post to the SPD as a “painful” but “acceptable” price paid by her CDU party to form a coalition government.

“The alternative would have been that we would have had to tell people that we had a coalition agreement on the matter, but we could not agree on the ministries, which was not responsible,” she said.

Merkel denied that she has lost authority inside her own party, despite having faced some unrest within her conservative ranks over the coalition deal.

The CDU leader also said that the names of the six ministers from her party in the new government will be announced by the party congress on February 26.