BERLIN (MNI) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right
CDU/CSU-FDP coalition scored a crucial victory in Wednesday’s election
for the German Presidency.
Their candidate, Christian Wulff, the state premier of Lower
Saxony, won the majority in the Federal convention in the third round of
voting — where a plurality of votes sufficed. In the first two rounds
none of the candidates received the necessary absolute majority.
The German President, who has a principally ceremonial role, is
elected by parliamentarians from the federal and the state governments
in the so-called Federal Convention.
In the third round, Wulff scored 625 out of the 1244 votes. That
means, again, not all of the 644 members from the ruling coalition voted
for Wulff. In the first round Wulff got only 600 votes and in the second
round 615.
The candidate of the center-left SPD and the ecologist Greens,
Joachim Gauck, scored 494 votes in the final round. The opposition had
named the prominent conservative in the hope of winning some votes from
the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition.
The post communist Left Party withdrew their own candidate Luc
Jochimsen in the third round but a majority of their delegates still did
not back Gauck and rather abstained from voting.
A defeat of Wulff would have been a severe blow to Merkel’s
up-to-now rather unfortunate center-right CDU/CSU-FDP government
coalition.
Ever since forming the government last autumn, the three coalition
parties have been arguing publicly among themselves on a wide array of
topics ranging from tax cuts to health sector reform.
A key problem has been that the coalition contract was agreed upon
hastily last autumn and several contentious issues have only been
papered over.
Opposition politicians argued today that Merkel’s standing had been
further damaged because she had not been able to close the ranks behind
Wulff in the first two rounds of voting.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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