Angela Merkel has been elected for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor and is scheduled to be sworn in on Wednesday.
The German parliament voted on Wednesday morning to give Merkel her fourth term. The results of the secret ballot show that 364 of the 709 members of the Bundestag voted in favour of Merkel, representing nine more than the 50 percent required.
The vote puts and end to six months of political uncertainty in Germany when, after a federal election that wreaked havoc into the two main political parties’ electorate. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) lost millions of voters to parties on the left and right.
Merkel’s CDU and the Social Democrats have 399 voted between them. The two parties have agreed to re-enter a grand coalition together.