Main focus of Friday, July 2, 2010

Presidential election causes trouble for Merkel

Following the longest presidential election in the history of the German Federal Republic, the new president Christian Wulff will be sworn in today, Friday. While noting the lack of unity among the opposition, the European press believes it is above all the Merkel government that has been weakened and thinks its end is near.

La Repubblica - Italy

It took three rounds of voting to elect Germany's new federal president and not all the voters within the ruling coalition voted for him. A debacle for Chancellor Angela Merkel, writes the left-liberal daily La Repubblica, speculating that she may face the same end as her predecessor Gerhard Schröder: "The humiliating  vote of no confidence of dozens of voters of the centre-right in the presidential elections has left the most important country in Europe looking like a place of instability and political weakness. The 'most powerful woman in the world' with sensational poll ratings is only a memory. The coalition must now prove that it intends to stop quarrelling. The last time there was a political climate of this kind was at the end of the Schröder era, when the 'German Tony Blair' lost support within his own party over controversial reforms - and ultimately lost the elections he himself had wanted as well. Now only a first-class performance by the German economy will be able to save 'Angie.'" (02/07/2010)

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Rzeczpospolita - Poland

The laboured election of Christian Wulff, the candidate backed by the ruling coalition, as German federal president is a symptom of the current weakness of Chancellor Angela Merkel's leadership, writes the conservative daily Rzeczpospolita, noting that it's time for a new style of government: "During the marathon on Wednesday it became clear that the chancellor has lost her power over her party - not to mention her influence over the coalition partners - the Bavarian CSU and the liberal FDP. ... No one doubts that they [the CDU rebels who initially didn't vote for Wulff] wanted to show their great dissatisfaction with the party leader and the government. 'Merkel must now seriously consider how she can change her government, writes her biographer, Gerd Langguth. Many observers hold the view that what happened is the beginning of her political demise and the imminent collapse of the ruling coalition." (02/07/2010)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Poland
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Die Welt - Germany

The conservative daily Die Welt analyses the state of the opposition following the election of the ruling coalition's candidate: "At any rate the red-green camp has been nothing but a chimera since Wednesday evening. Whether it returns as a ghost depends on how seriously the SPD [Social Democrats] and Greens take the experiences they've just had with the 'Left'. To hope, like Sigmar Gabriel [leader of the SPD], that the 'sensible ones' in the 'Left' would soon take over the command and replace the 'old Stalinists' is simply naïve. ... Gauck [the opposition party candidate] personifies the general attack on the leftist lie that the GDR was. ... This Gauck movement should go on, with the means being the end. The civil rights activist has shaken up the backward looking German Left, and frightened it out of the equation with his mere appearance. This may not have been intentional, but it was still a welcome and necessary clean up."  (02/07/2010)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Elections, » Germany
All available articles from » Claus Christian Malzahn

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