{"id":9162,"date":"2021-01-16T11:27:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-16T11:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/world\/europe\/article\/3118025\/merkels-ally-wins-race-lead-her-party-kicking-german-election"},"modified":"2021-01-16T11:27:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T11:27:52","slug":"merkels-ally-armin-laschet-wins-race-to-lead-her-party-kicking-off-german-election-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/16\/merkels-ally-armin-laschet-wins-race-to-lead-her-party-kicking-off-german-election-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Merkel\u2019s ally Armin Laschet wins race to lead her party, kicking off German election campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s conservative CDU party on Saturday picked her ally Armin Laschet as its next leader, in a vote that kicks off the race for Germany\u2019s top job as a deadly pandemic roils Europe\u2019s biggest economy.In the close race, Laschet, the state premier of Germany\u2019s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, triumphed over old Merkel nemesis Friedrich Merz, after a first round that saw Merz leading by just five votes.A third hopeful, foreign affairs expert Norbert Roettgen, was\u2026\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/world\/europe\/article\/3118025\/merkels-ally-wins-race-lead-her-party-kicking-german-election\">South China Morning Post<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s conservative CDU party on Saturday picked her ally Armin Laschet as its next leader, in a vote that kicks off the race for Germany\u2019s top job as a deadly pandemic roils Europe\u2019s biggest economy.In the close race, Laschet, the &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":742,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9163,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9162\/revisions\/9163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}