German political leaders voiced relief Monday at a cross-party consensus to appoint 72-year-old human-rights advocate, Joachim Gauck, as the country’s next president - but there was also criticism of the choice.
His formal appointment by a 1,240-person constitutional assembly on March 18 to replace Christian Wulff, who resigned on Friday amid corruption allegations, is expected to be straightforward.
Gauck, who is to be nominated by four main political blocs, will be the first former East German to occupy the mainly ceremonial post. Like Chancellor Angela Merkel, he grew up under communism and became an ardent critic of leftists.
He was not the first choice of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, some of whom said off the record they felt like losers in the consensus.
Gauck, a former custodian of files left by the East German secret police, was runner-up when Wulff was appointed in 2010.
His longtime opponents in the Left Party said they would decide Thursday whether to make the vote a contest by putting up a second nominee.
German Muslims also questioned the choice, as did Internet activists.
Wulff reached out to Muslims during his 20-month presidency whereas Gauck has been silent about accommodating Islam in Germany’s heritage, telling one interviewer that integration was not about Muslim or foreign identity but only about helping the have-nots.
“We are naturally hoping that Gauck will continue the integration efforts of his predecessor which gave Muslims the feeling they belonged in Germany,” said Ali Kizilkaya, chairman of the Council of Muslims, in remarks to appear in the newspaper Tagesspiegel.
In web communities, Gauck faced criticism over remarks favoring data retention to investigate crime. Net activists fiercely oppose web and phone providers logging their user data and passing the records to police when ordered to do so by the courts.
But the media and leading public officials united in praising Gauck. Merkel described him as “a teacher of democracy.” Bild, Germany’s biggest circulation newspaper, called him “the right president.”
Roland Methling, the mayor of Rostock, Gauck’s hometown where as a local Lutheran minister he led demonstrations in 1989 to oust the communists, said Gauck personified “like no one else” Germany’s gradual reunification over the past two decades.
Media commentators predicted Gauck would be a very different type of president from his predecessors, and would use his office to fearlessly criticize leading politicians.
Andrea Nahles, general secretary of the opposition Social Democrats who were first to back him, said on ZDF breakfast television, “I don’t want a president who is easy to get on with.”
“He’s there to speak straight to politicians and to the people, and Joachim Gauck can do that with enormous moral authority,” he said.