Berlin welcomes pastor’s presidency bid

The choice of Joachim Gauck, civil rights activist, former East German Protestant pastor, and scourge of the Stasi secret police, as cross-party candidate for federal president of Germany, has been greeted with almost universal acclaim in Berlin. Less than 22 years after unification, when capitalist West Germany effectively took over the Communist East, the two most prominent jobs in the country will be filled by easterners: Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and head of the government, and Mr Gauck as head of state. He is set to be elected on March 18 with an overwhelming majority in a specially convened federal assembly, backed by all four major political parties in government and opposition. Only the far-left Linke party is likely to oppose him. He crossed swords with many of its former Communist members when investigating the Stasi files. Yet when Ms Merkel announced the nomination of Mr Gauck on Sunday night, after three days of frantic negotiations within her centre-right coalition, followed by talks with the opposition Social Democratic party and environmentalist Greens, the one person who looked uncomfortable was the chancellor herself. She had been forced by the junior partner in her coalition, the Free Democratic party, to accept Mr Gauck, who already enjoyed the support of the opposition. The process has revealed much about negotiations across the left-right divide in German politics, and called into question Ms Merkel’s remarkable political instinct. Yet it has also demonstrated her capacity to cut her losses, and opt for a pragmatic solution, when a bitter fight might have pulled her government apart. In spite of their common background, the non-party political Mr Gauck – he describes himself as a “left liberal conservative” – was thwarted by Ms Merkel in his attempt to become president in 2010, when he was first proposed by the SPD and Greens. The fiery preacher was a hugely popular choice. He enjoyed widespread media support, from the rightwing Bild newspaper to the leftwing magazine, Der Spiegel. He was frontrunner in the polls. But Ms Merkel, under pressure from her own Christian Democratic Union, went for a political alternative. She put up Christian Wulff, prime minister of Lower Saxony and a leading member of the party. He won by a small majority in the third round of voting. It was Mr Wulff’s resignation on Friday, triggered by a demand from the state prosecutor in Hanover to lift his immunity in order to investigate improper political favours in his former job, that led to the latest political upheaval. Now Ms Merkel has been forced to accept that she made a mistake – and Mr Gauck was the better choice. Opposition leaders have rubbed it in. Instead of being a triumph for the chancellor, the decision is seen as a rare victory for the liberal FDP, a party that has seen its support collapse in the opinion polls. Philipp Rösler, FDP leader and vice-chancellor, rejected a series of proposed alternative candidates put forward by Ms Merkel and the CDU, before he flatly insisted on Mr Gauck as the universal choice of his party presidium. More political choices would have been seen as a signal of her preference for the next government: Klaus Töpfer, former environment minister, as a forerunner for a CDU-Green coalition; Wolfgang Huber, former Protestant Bishop of Berlin, and a Social Democrat, would have suggested a grand coalition with the SPD. Both were anathema to the FDP. By accepting Mr Gauck’s nomination, Ms Merkel has left all her options open. Her current coalition with the FDP will survive, but after the next elections in 2013, she can still choose the SPD or Greens as a partner. From: FT