Angela Merkel

Like many people around the world, I am constantly searching for signs of excellent leadership among global heads of government or state.

Sadly, I am left wanting.

There are individuals exerting strong leadership globally or regionally. However, I discount people like China’s President Xi, Russia’s President Putin, and India’s Prime Minister Modi since they are proponents of authoritarianism, and advocate abuses of human rights and democratic freedoms and, in some cases, ethnic cleansing and racial or religious divisions in their own countries.

Indeed, I define an excellent leader as one who not only does things right, but also does the right things.

That leaves very few influential leaders around today who inspire and do the right things. And, if one looks for a leader with global reach and economic heft, one is left with one liberal democratic leader who inspires leadership at home and abroad: Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Why do I discount other leaders such as France's Emmanuel Macron, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau?

Macron has serious problems at home and, with the Gilets Jaunes protests, has shown that he has something of a tin ear when it comes to listening to his own people.

Ardern is a brilliant and empathetic leader. However, New Zealand has neither the military or economic heft with which to pull the rest of the world, is seen to be far away from anywhere else, and has a minute global imprint.

Trudeau has suffered from a number of ethical challenges throughout his political life and, although he has managed the coronavirus crisis well to date, his government was reduced to minority status in the last election, and his leadership continues to be questioned by many Canadians.

Angela Merkel, on the other hand, has been in office since 2005, has demonstrated personal and professional probity, is a highly educated and intelligent leader, grew up in communist East Germany yet made it to the pinnacle of political leadership in a unified democratic Germany, and has consistently done the right thing as well as doing things well.

For a time, she was highly criticized by the European colleagues and the German hard right for allowing hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees to settle in Germany. It was the right thing to do given the alternatives facing these refugees, and many have integrated well into German society.

The refugee situation temporarily opened political space for the hard-right Alternatif für Deutschland (AfD). However, Merkel’s excellent management of the political, economic, health, and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic has once again made Germany the envy of the world.

As a scientist and academic, she has the professional knowledge and training to deal with complex scientific challenges. She also has an excellent ability to connect with her citizens, using simple language to explain well difficult or complex subjects, and has the credibility of never having been known to lie to her voters.

Honesty, transparency, and intelligence are the hallmarks of her leadership and, unlike many of her contemporaries, she has refused to engage in the creation of a cult of personality or to enhance her constitutional powers in any way.

This is true leadership.

As I said at the beginning of this article, not only doing things right, but doing the right things.

If she retires in 2021 as she has announced, she will leave a world bereft of positive democratic leadership at a time when it most needs it.

I hope that she can see her way to postpone the inevitable and nurture one or more German leaders who can take up her global leadership mantle.

Absent this, I fear for the future of the currently fragmented North Atlantic democratic alliance that could well face a major crisis of leadership.

Edición: Laura Espejo