FDP outwits Merkel in race to select new president

CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel’s struggling coalition partners claimed a rare victory over the German leader yesterday after apparently forcing her into a political climbdown.

Following last week’s resignation of scandal-tainted German president Christian Wulff, a political ally of Dr Merkel, her Free Democrat (FDP) junior partners forced her to back as his successor the man whose presidential ambitions she thwarted two years ago.

Joachim Gauck, a former East German civil rights campaigner and Lutheran pastor, was presented yesterday as a consensus candidate after Dr Merkel failed to find an alternative after a frantic weekend of political horse-trading.

Opposition leaders, and many editorial writers, portrayed the outcome as the first crack in Dr Merkel’s previously solid power base. Dr Merkel gritted her teeth and presented the 72-year-old as a pragmatic, obvious choice.

“I’m sure this man can give us important impulses for the challenges of our time,” she said. Then a conciliatory note: “Personal freedom is a central theme for Gauck, something that – for all our differences – unites me with him.”

The opposition Social Democrats and Greens were jubilant that their man was headed for Bellevue Palace after all.

“Chancellor Merkel should acknowledge that she chose the wrong man two years ago,” said Andrea Nahles, SPD general secretary. “This time it wasn’t the FDP that caved, but the chancellor.”

The deal was done after a fruitless weekend search for a consensus candidate from one party suitable to all the others. Spotting a chance to win some badly-needed points with the electorate, FDP leaders shifted to back the popular Mr Gauck, before telling the chancellor.

Aware she had been out-foxed, a furious Dr Merkel gave in to the inevitable rather than risk a showdown and a coalition break-up.

A frosty atmosphere is now likely to prevail at her cabinet table until the autumn 2013 general election – if the government makes it that far.

For many onlookers, Dr Merkel’s wariness of Mr Gauck has always been a puzzle. A fellow East German, he became the first post-1989 custodian of the Stasi file archive and has been seen since as a unifying figure with a moral standing Germans demand of their presidents and which recent heads of state lacked.

Dr Merkel’s resistance to Mr Gauck, confidants say, is based on practical and political considerations. Germany’s head of state, though ostensibly apolitical, needs a thick skin to survive the rough and tumble of public life.

The premature departure of Horst Köhler in 2010, a technocrat wounded by media criticism, left Dr Merkel wary of nominating another non-politician.

Mr Wulff’s abrupt departure, amid claims he took favours as a state premier from businessmen, forced a rapid response from a leader averse to quick decisions.

No stranger to political U-turns, it remains to be seen whether she sustains any lasting damage to her credibility from this episode.

Interestingly, since his failed 2010 bid, Mr Gauck has expressed opinions far closer to Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats than his original left-wing backers, opposing the Occupy movement and Germany’s nuclear energy moratorium.

Germany’s 11th president, set to be elected on March 18th, may be one of its most conservative.