German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed late on Sunday to back former East German rights activist Joachim Gauck to become the country’s next president, resolving a political dispute that had become a damaging distraction.
The decision followed former German president Christian Wulff’s resignation from the post on Friday over a corruption probe and came after Merkel and her conservatives dropped their objections to the opposition’s candidate, 72-year-old Gauck.
Merkel, who like Gauck grew up in communist East Germany and is a Protestant, hailed the popular pastor as a “true teacher of democracy” who had helped the country come together since its reunification in 1990.
Gauck was the candidate of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens in June 2010 against Wulff, a former Christian Democrat state premier and Merkel’s hand-picked choice for the largely ceremonial office as a kind of moral arbiter for the nation.
Despite Merkel’s strong backing, Wulff was only elected in the third round of voting — a messy start to a doomed presidency.
The mainstream opposition put forward Gauck again following Wulff’s decision to step down. Only the far-left Die Linke, which includes several former East German communists, said it would withhold support when the president is elected next month.
Conservatives were initially reluctant to support Gauck as they feared losing face and offering a political gift to the opposition, but their desire to end a bruising chapter won out in the end.
Gauck’s victory is now assured with a clear majority of support in the assembly comprised of deputies and dignitaries that chooses the president, meaning two former East Germans will occupy the most important political offices in the country.
A visibly moved Gauck, who a majority of Germans say can restore credibility to the damaged office after Wulff’s series of scandals, said he was deeply honored to be nominated.
“It is a very special day for me, even in a life where I have had several,” he told reporters.
He said he was pleased that “someone like me, born during a terrible war and who lived 50 years under a dictatorship ... should be called upon today become head of state” and now wanted to help restore Germans’ “faith in their own strength” in the face of the eurozone crisis.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion