BERLIN, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Host Seehofer hit back at mounting criticism on Wednesday after his party suffered heavy losses in Germany's recent federal elections.
Seehofer, who also acts as the governor of the German state of Bavaria, urged fellow party members who blame him for the CSU's poor performance in the election to refrain from dragging internal debates about personnel and strategy into the public domain.
"The damage is already done," Seehofer told reporters, warning that the CSU risked becoming a laughingstock. Instead of infighting, the party needed to project unity as it entered coalition negotiations in order to boost its legislative leverage in the next German government.
"This weakens us in Berlin of course," Seehofer said, asking how the party could assume a strong position versus its potential coalition partners when it appeared to be in disarray.
The CSU received 38.8 percent of the Bavarian vote in Sunday's federal elections, down by more than 10 percentage points compared with the last national poll. The CSU is a regional party which only competes politically in Bavaria and traditionally forms a joint parliamentary faction with Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at the federal level.
Seehofer's party is widely expected to join a so-called "Jamaica" coalition with the CDU, Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Greens (Gruene). The Bavarian governor voiced concern, however, that the CSU had reached a fork in road, and whether it remained capable of governing.
Speaking ahead of a party committee meeting, Seehofer admitted that the last two days had been "burdensome" for the CSU. He described resolving inner party strife as a more urgent and complicated task than prospective coalition negotiations.
Earlier, honorary CSU chairman Edmund Stoiber described Sunday's electoral outcome as a "historic defeat" which posed a threat to the party's identity. The CSU now had to "substantially push back" the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, he said.
While Stoiber refused to comment directly on Seehofer's political future, he warned that the party leader knew that the CSU "expected" an upper limit on the number of refugees admitted to Germany each year. The CSU repeatedly promised that specific measure on the campaign trail, but has so far faced firm opposition from Chancellor Angela Merkel on the issue.
For Stoiber, Merkel's refugee policy was the "overriding" reason why voters had turned their back on the CSU.
"Many voters which were loyal to us for decades did not vote for the CSU this time because they do not agree with the refugee policy of Angela Merkel," Stoiber said.
CSU parliamentary delegate Alexander Hoffman was more personal in his criticism of the party leadership, openly calling for Seehofer to step down from his post.
Seehofer had done "great things" for the CSU in the past, but the party's current "crisis of credibility" was also attributable to him, Hoffman told the newspaper Main-Echo. Several other party members have been similarly urging Seehofer to resign since Sunday's elections.
