PROFILE Angela Merkel: standard-bearer for the ailing European establishment

Berlin (dpa) - Angela Merkel faces her biggest challenge since coming to power in Germany 11 years ago as she seeks to stand up to a rising tide of populism and to reassert her position as the region‘s paramount leader.After seeing off challengers over the years, on Tuesday Merkel once again secured the backing of her Christian Democrats (CDU) for a fourth term as chancellor in next year‘s elections, with members also voting a ninth time for her to be party leader.But the vote also underlined Merkel‘s weakened political standing in Germany after her decision to open Germany‘s borders last year to nearly 900,000 refugees.The tensions unleased by that decision within her conservative political bloc were reflected in the party ballot.After securing 96.7 per cent two years ago when the vote for party chief was last held, the 62-year-old Merkel‘s support fell to 89.5 per cent - her second lowest vote since she was first elected party chief in 2000. Indeed, the days when supporters affectionately called her Angie or Mutti (mum) largely vanished as the refugee crisis set in.Still, politicians in regular contact with the chancellor say the biggest mistake would be to underestimate her political savvy. It‘s often said she gets her own way through patience and waiting until opponents have exhausted themselves.Merkel was seen as a stop-gap leader when she was first voted as CDU leader in 2000 after she ousted her mentor, former chancellor Helmut Kohl, at the height of donations scandal that rocked the conservatives.Now, 16 years later, she has received accolades from sections of the international media, who are calling her the leader of the free world after the shock vote in Britain to exit the European Union and the election of the New York billionaire Donald Trump as US president. Victory next September would mean that Merkel could challenge Kohl‘s 16-year-reign as Germany‘s longest serving chancellor.Married twice but without any children, Merkel deftly steered Berlin‘s eurozone partners through the recent debt crisis and headed off the threat of a breakup of the currency bloc.A Russian speaker, Merkel‘s famed crisis management skills were further tested as she helped to forge the diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine."You might find that I take a while to make a decision but I think about it before I do something, and that has its advantages," she once said.The cautious Merkel seemed to vanish in September last year, when she decided to open Germany‘s borders to allow refugees stranded in Hungary to travel to Germany so as to avert the threat of a humanitarian crisis.Cities and towns across Germany complained that they were running out of space to house the asylum-seekers, even as Merkel was serenely declaring: "We can do it." The numbers of new arrivals this year are set to be about a third of the 2015 figure.The refugee policy triggered a slide in Merkel‘s popularity, and a corresponding rise in the strength of the nationalist populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). The refugee crisis was not the first time that Merkel has shaken up the nation.In 2011, she mounted a major political U-turn by abandoning her long-standing commitment to nuclear power and announcing plans to boost greener energy in the wake of the 2011 meltdown at Japan‘s Fukushima nuclear power plant.Merkel‘s character was shaped by her childhood growing up in a totalitarian system. Born in Hamburg in 1954, she moved a short time later with her leftist Lutheran clergyman father and family to communist East Germany.She worked as a scientist at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry in the former German Democratic Republic. Untainted by communist ties, her political career began as spokeswoman for the first post-communist GDR government.After German unification in 1990, she joined the CDU and was elected to the first all-German parliament. A year later Kohl brought her into his cabinet as minister of health and women‘s affairs.Merkel, whose husband Joachim Sauer is a scientist, lives modestly in central Berlin without expensive possessions with the two enjoying both hiking and classical music.