GERMANY CHOOSES a new president today in a vote that will be a crucial test of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political authority and the future of her embattled coalition.
Germany’s presidential election is normally a predictable affair, in which a government candidate is chosen over a token opposition candidate by a special assembly of Bundestag deputies and regional delegates.
This time around, however, there is a whiff of rebellion in the air even though Dr Merkel’s nominee, the Lower Saxony state premier Christian Wulff, has a healthy majority of 21 votes.
Many government deputies, bored and frustrated with Dr Merkel’s coalition, have threatened to vote for the opposition candidate, Joachim Gauck.
The snap vote was necessitated by the surprise resignation of President Horst Köhler.
Federal assembly guidelines insist that all delegates are to “ignore all instructions” on how to vote in the secret ballot. The only ones who ever take this rule seriously are delegates sent by the federal states, who normally include well-known faces from television and film.
But with the coalition government’s future riding on this vote, officials from the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Free Democrat (FDP) parties have been working hard while regional leaders have turned down the star wattage in favour of trusted delegates who will vote as they’re told.
“Politically, the vote is about the government parties sending out a signal of unity and a will to make a new start,” said Prof Oskar Niedermayer, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University.
“If all players do the rational thing politically, Mr Wulff will win effortlessly in the first ballot. But the question is whether all will behave rationally.”
After a disastrous start into their second term, many CDU MPs would have embraced Mr Gauck as their candidate – and some may be tempted to back him anyway. An even weaker link is the junior coalition partner, the FDP. Party rank and file are frustrated with party leader Guido Westerwelle, and feel humiliated by Dr Merkel’s blocking of their tax cuts and healthcare reforms.
But a full-scale FDP revolt is unlikely after the party slipped to just 4 per cent support in a poll yesterday. That’s a long way from last September’s 14.6 per cent election result and below even the 5 per cent hurdle required for parliamentary representation. Chastened FDP delegates are unlikely to do anything rash today that would endanger the government.
Even so, they retain ample potential to damage Dr Merkel. Refusing to back Mr Wulff in a first and even a second round would force voting into a third round, requiring just a simple majority for Mr Wulff.
The unpredictable element will be provided by the Left Party. They know their own candidate will be eliminated early on but if they shift their votes to Mr Wulff, they will be backing a government they would rather bring down. At the same time, supporting Mr Gauck is a difficult choice for many post-communist delegates from the Left Party who are critical his previous role as custodian of the Stasi secret police files.
Party rival of Merkel or campaigning pastor
Fifty-one-year-old lawyer Christian Wulff (above) joined the CDU aged just 16 and has worked his way to the top, winning for the party in 2003 the state of Lower Saxony once governed by Gerhard Schröder.
As state governor he has proven a competent operator who, earlier this year, appointed to his state cabinet Germany’s first Muslim minister.
His election today would make him only the second Catholic president in German post-war history — and remove the last serious challenger to Chancellor Merkel’s authority within the CDU.
A decade after she snatched the party leadership from under their noses, the so-called CDU “crown princes” have departed Germany’s political stage one by one in recent months. Mr Wulff’s election as president would remove the last challenger.
Joachim Gauck’s (above) chances of becoming president are slim, but his candidacy will be remembered as one of the great might-have-beens. Within hours of his nomination by the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, the 70 year-old attracted extraordinary support from the media and from ordinary Germans.
The Lutheran pastor earned Germany’s respect two decades ago as a high-profile civil rights campaigner who helped bring about the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He built on that respect in the 1990s as custodian of the files left behind by the Stasi. With a gift for oration and a warm personality, Mr Gauck has ample presidential polish and describes himself as a “leftist liberal conservative”.
His campaign aim was to encourage Germans – including those who grew up in East Germany – to embrace freedom.