A8| Saturday/Sunday, February 22 - 23, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
WORLD NEWS
Modi’s home state of Gujarat,
and with a capacity of 110,000.
Mr. Trump has held some
100 campaign rallies since his
2016 election victory—just
three in the past week alone—
but his largest rallies have
topped off at about 20,
people.
The festivities will gloss
over an escalating trade dis-
pute between the world’s two
largest democracies that
largely has been overshad-
owed by the market-rattling
conflict between the U.S. and
China. A proposed U.S. deal
with India was shelved this
year, with Mr. Trump saying
Thursday that such a pact
wouldn’t be made until after
the U.S. election in November.
An administration official
said Mr. Trump planned to
discuss his concerns with Mr.
Modi about an Indian citizen-
ship law that critics say dis-
criminates against Muslims.
He also planned to privately
encourage Mr. Modi to reduce
tensions with Pakistan over
disputes in Kashmir, and to
seek support from India in the
peace process in Afghanistan,
the official said.
The two leaders make an
odd couple. Mr. Trump is a
real-estate tycoon and former
reality-television star, while
Mr. Modi is the son of a tea-
stall owner. Both have risen on
the nationalist wave and de-
throned establishment powers
in their conservative parties.
They have met eight times
since Mr. Trump took office,
including on the stage of a
rally in Houston, attracting
50,000 people, that the U.S.
president hosted on Mr.
Modi’s behalf.
President Trump is a popu-
lar figure in India. A recent
Pew Research poll showed that
56% of people—higher than al-
most any nation in the
world—have confidence that
Mr. Trump will do the right
thing in global affairs.
Mr. Modi is expected to use
his meeting with the leader of
the world’s most powerful
country to project strength.
Meanwhile, Mr. Modi’s poli-
cies, which critics say margin-
alize India’s Muslims and
other minorities and under-
mine India’s secular and dem-
ocratic foundation, have in re-
cent months triggered the
biggest protests since he took
office. The Modi administra-
tion denies its critics’ charges.WASHINGTON—President
Trump’s first visit to India
next week will do more to
highlight his personal diplo-
macy with Indian Prime Minis-
ter Narendra Modi than it will
to address tensions over eco-
nomic issues.
The leaders of the two na-
tions likely will underscore the
strength of their security rela-
tionship, according to senior
U.S. officials. Bolstering those
securities ties, at least in part,
are shared concerns about ter-
rorism, immigration and the
rise of China as a superpower.
“The major area of conver-
gence between the U.S. and In-
dia over the last few years has
been on the diplomatic and se-
curity front,” said Tanvi
Madan, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution.
“It’s been quite remarkable
how much progress they have
made, spurred in no small part
by shared U.S. and Indian con-
cerns about China’s actions in
the region,” Ms. Madan said.
The visit comes amid sim-
mering disagreements over
trade, e-commerce restrictions
and religious and minority
protections. But senior U.S. of-
ficials say Mr. Trump and Mr.
Modi will be more focused on
celebrating their personal re-
lationship.
“We are not treated very
well by India,” Mr. Trump told
reporters on Tuesday, referring
to issues concerning trade or
e-commerce, “but I happen to
like Prime Minister Modi a lot.”
U.S. presidents often re-
ceive red-carpet treatment in
India, from President Obama’s
guest-of-honor status at the
historic Republic Day celebra-
tions in 2015 to the renaming
of a northern Indian village,
Carterpuri, after the 38th
American president visited
there in 1978.
The trip by Mr. Trump, the
fourth consecutive U.S. presi-
dent to visit India, will be brief
but colorful. With less than 36
hours between his arrival and
departure, he will visit the Taj
Mahal, meet with Indian busi-
nessmen who have invested in
U.S. manufacturing operations,
and take part in a state dinner
in the presidential palace.
But Mr. Trump’s most an-
ticipated event is a rally at Sa-
dar Patel Stadium, designed
for cricket matches in Mr.BYMICHAELC.BENDER
ANDERICBELLMANTrump India Visit to
Stress Ties With Modi
WORLD WATCH
IRANTurnout Is Focus in
Parliament ElectionsIran extended voting hours in
its parliamentary elections Fri-
day as the conservative estab-
lishment attempted to secure a
strong turnout amid popular
mistrust at home and escalating
tensions with the U.S.
The final results are expected
to come over the weekend and
likely will provide conservative
candidates a larger share of the
seats in the 290-member legis-
lature after thousands of moder-
ates and reformers were dis-
qualified. But it is the size of the
turnout that is most on the
minds of Iran’s top leadership, as
it helps to provide a measure of
legitimacy, experts say.
Initially scheduled to close at
6 p.m. local time, polls were later
extended to 11 p.m.
The country’s establishment
is facing its biggest challenge indecades over its handling of an
economy battered by U.S. sanc-
tions. Tehran used brute force to
suppress widespread protests in
November, leaving hundreds
dead, according to rights groups.
More protests followed after Iran
attempted to cover up its role in
shooting down a Ukrainian pas-
senger airline in January, helping
to prompt calls in some quarters
to boycott Friday’s election.
—Aresu EqbaliGERMANYOfficials Warn of
Right-Wing ViolenceGermany is boosting police
protection of mosques, transport
hubs and large public events af-
ter a mass shooting Wednesday
that was motivated by racism. It
was the latest in a string of far-
right extremist attacks and plots
in the country to raise fears
about further terrorist violence.
Interior Minister Horst See-hofer said the killing of nine
people of immigrant background
in Hanau, near Frankfurt, was
“clearly a racist terrorist attack,”
and warned that it could trigger
a spiral of violence. “What be-
came clear in Hanau is that far-
right extremist, racist and anti-
Semitic theses are poison that
cloud people’s minds,” he said.
Both Mr. Seehofer and Justice
Minister Christine Lambrecht said a
series of attacks in recent months
and the discovery of armed right-
wing terrorist cells showed that
far-right extremism is the “biggest
threat to German democracy.”
Tobias Rathjen, the 43-year-old
suspect who was found dead af-
ter his killing spree, wrote and re-
corded videos calling for the ex-
termination of entire ethnic
groups. Experts said his largely
incoherent writings suggested
mental illness. The investigations
are focusing on whether Rathjen
had any assistance or contacts to
extremist groups.
—Ruth BenderTHAILANDOpposition Party
Is Barred by CourtThailand’s Constitutional
Court ordered the popular oppo-
sition Future Forward Party dis-
solved, declaring that it violates
election law by accepting a loan
from its leader, Thanathorn
Juangroongruangkit.
The court also imposed a 10-
year ban on the party’s executive
members holding political office.
The ruling against the party
comes just ahead of a no-confi-
dence debate in Parliament set
to begin Monday against Prime
Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and
several cabinet members. The
opposition party has been an ir-
ritant to the government and
the conservative forces in Thai
society that back it because of
its reformist positions and popu-
larity. It placed a strong third in
a general election in March 2019.
—Associated PressVoters cast ballots on Friday during parliamentary elections in Tehran. The final results are expected to come over the weekend.MARYAM RAHMANIAN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALhad been mentally disturbed.
Between the general elec-
tion of 2017 and the European
elections last year, pollster In-
fratest Dimap calculated that
the CDU lost 4.3 million vot-
ers, including 260,000 to the
AfD and 1.1 million to the
Greens. The Greens are now
polling at around 22%, making
the party the second-most-
popular behind the CDU, ac-
cording to Politico’s Poll of
Polls from Feb. 17.
Pollsters warn that the de-
parture of Ms. Merkel could
dent the CDU’s rating further.
In the monthly Politbarometer
tracker of politicians’ personal
approval ratings, Ms. Merkel is
closely followed by the leaders
of the Greens.
The first candidate to step
forward is Norbert Röttgen,
head of parliament’s foreignaf-
fairs committee. Once a close
ally of Ms. Merkel before the
two fell out, Mr. Röttgen is a
former environment minister
and committed ally of the U.S.
He is also the lead critic of Ms.
Merkel’s plan to allow China’s
Huawei Technologies Co. to
build Germany’s next-genera-
tion mobile network, siding
with Washington’s efforts to
sideline the company.
Other likely contenders are
Armin Laschet, premier of the
state of North-Rhine Westpha-
lia, Jens Spahn, health minis-
ter, and Friedrich Merz, a se-
nior CDU official turned
business lawyer who lost a
power battle to Ms. Merkel in
the early 2000s.Yet, the party’s ratings have
stagnated at a high level for
the past three years. Ostra-
cized by all other parties, it
has been unable to get into
governments nationally or lo-
cally. It was overtaken by the
environmentalist Greens,
boosted by renewed concern
about climate change and
broad revulsion against the
far-right after a string of un-
connected racist and xenopho-
bic attacks and conspiracies
rocked the country in the past
year.Since a racially motivated
shooting Wednesday night
that left nine dead near Frank-
furt—the worst terror act
since an Islamist-inspired at-
tack in late 2016—centrist pol-
iticians have denounced what
they said was the AfD’s role in
shaping the racist psychology
of the gunman. Germany’s do-
mestic intelligence agency has
said it was monitoring some
groupings within the party for
possible extremist activities.
The AfD has rejected any
connection between its posi-
tion and the motivation of the
attacker, who was found dead
after his rampage, saying hepopular politicians, but her
popularity has faded since she
opened the country’s borders
to hundreds of thousands of
refugees in 2015 in what
would become her most con-
troversial decision.
Her conservative bloc suf-
feredevenmore.
The CDU went on to score
its worst postwar election re-
sult in 2017 and its ratings
have fallen ever since. With
polls showing its share of the
vote oscillating around 27%, it
is still Germany’s largest party
but off a full 6 points since the
election.
First to hit Ms. Merkel’s
bloc was the loss of about a
million votes to the far-right
Alternative for Germany, a
once-obscure party with sup-
port in the low single digits
that was boosted by the back-
lash against the chancellor’s
open-arms immigration policy.
Campaigning on an anti-im-
migration and anti-Islam
ticket, the AfD, an eclectic
movement that includes Nazi
apologists and economic liber-
tarians, became the biggest
opposition party in parliament
with nearly 13% of the votes. It
now has lawmakers in all of
Germany’s 16 state assemblies.
In the former East German
regions, the nativist party re-
corded its biggest successes to
date, capturing nearly a quar-
terofthevotesinsomestate
elections, despite violating a
longstanding political taboo in
Germany—questioning the
consensus on its Nazi past.BERLIN—The candidates to
succeed Angela Merkel as
chair of her conservative
party—and possibly as Ger-
many’s next chancellor—are
facing a daunting challenge:
To recapture ground lost to
the nativist right, while re-
versing an exodus of voters to
the center-left.
The race for Ms. Merkel’s
successor was thrown wide
open this month when her
protégée and designated suc-
cessor quit as head of the
Christian Democratic Union af-
ter just more than a year in
the job, undoing Ms. Merkel’s
carefully choreographed script
for an orderly transition ahead
of 2021 elections.
The resignation triggered a
leadership contest that will
decide whether the big-tent
conservative party, in power
since 2005, can retain its pri-
macy in an increasingly polar-
ized and fragmented political
environment. At stake is Ms.
Merkel’s domination of Ger-
many’s political center.
The contest—backroom ne-
gotiations that will culminate
in a vote at a party conference
any time between May and the
end of the year—takes place
against the darkening back-
drop of the slowing German
economy.
Meanwhile, Germany and
the European Union are being
squeezed by the escalating
confrontation between China
and the U.S.
The collapse of Ms.
Merkel’s succession plan is
rippling through the EU, which
relies on Germany, its largest
economy, to master challenges
ranging from a looming reces-
sion to global trade tensions
and military conflicts on the
bloc’s doorstep in the Middle
East and North Africa.
Germany’s leadership is
more crucial now that the
U.K., long the EU’s second-
largest economy and a diplo-
matic and defense heavy-
weight, has left the bloc.
Berlin’s introversion is leaving
Paris without its longtime
sparring partner, with which it
traditionally has shaped the
EU’s message on foreign pol-
icy, security, trade and climate
change.
Ms. Merkel, who has served
as chancellor for more than 14
years on a centrist agenda,
vowed not to seek re-election
after her term ends in the fall
of next year. She remains
among the country’s most
BYBOJANPANCEVSKI
Merkel Successor to Face Hurdles
The collapse of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s succession plan is rippling through the European Union.LUDOVIC MARIN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESGermany’s ruling
party is losing
voters to the nativist
right and center-left.
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