BERLIN (MNI) – None of the candidates for the German presidency
received the required absolute majority in a second round of voting this
afternoon, thus leaving the outcome still undecided.
A third round of voting is scheduled for around 16:00 GMT today.
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 first two rounds of voting
an absolute majority is required. In the third round a plurality will
suffice.
The candidate of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right
CDU/CSU-FDP coalition, Christian Wulff, who is the state premier of
Lower Saxony, scored 615 out of the 1244 votes in the Convention. That
means that again not all of the 644 members from the ruling coalition
voted for Wulff. In the first round he got only 600 votes.
The candidate of the center-left SPD and the ecologist Greens,
Joachim Gauck, got 490 votes in the second round after 499 in the first
one. The opposition had named the prominent conservative in the hope of
winning some votes from the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition. Luc Jochimsen, the
candidate of the post-communist Left party, mustered 123 votes (first
round: 126).
Everything will depend now on whether the Left Party withdraws its
candidate and supports Gauck in the third round.
That is highly unlikely, however. Leading members of the Left Party
reaffirmed today that their delegates won’t support Gauck even in the
third round, meaning that Wulff has the best chance of becoming the next
president.
The SPD and the Greens have called on the post-communists to change
their minds and support Gauck. The party leader of the post-communists,
Gesine Loetzsch, in return urged the SPD and the Greens to present a new
candidate for the third round. SPD party leader Sigmar Gabriel
immediately rejected that demand.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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