The Election of the German President

Frau Merkel has managed to avoid any number of problems in her time as chancellor although she might have played one power-politics card too many with her presidential candidate choice.

Everyone assumes she chose him to sideline him as far as internal party politics are concerned, which would be par for the course under normal conditions.

These however are not normal times. Perhaps the effort she has had to expend trying to manage her own "little" coalition between the CDU and the CSU, on top of the chicanery of managing the FDP has left her over-exposed in the middle of an ongoing European crisis.

The irony of it all is that Joachim Gauck would be an excellent president. But then again so would the current Minister for Labor Ms von der Leyen have been. Strange but true,the problem for her candidacy was that it would have meant that the two most important posts in Germany would have been woman. Equally strange, part of the problem being muted with Mr Gauck is that if he were president, than the two most important positions would be held by politicians from the "neue Bundeslaender".

Now why two woman causes problems while two men doesn't shows we still have some prejudices within that area. It is also strange that the "East German" brand, 21 years after the fall of the wall, kicks up some serious questions as well.

In this case it is bizarre that the Linke Party which is essentially the re- incarnation of the SED- former ruling party in the DDR- doesn't support Mr Gauck as his previous work was to investigate the Stasi files thus "outing" supporters of the Linke.

So now we have an election run-off between Gauck and Wulff. If Wulff doesn't win, and in the first vote he was short 23 votes, despite the government's 44 vote majority, it could cause serious problems for Frau Merkel.

Germany doesn't need that. Europe doesn't need that. Perhaps the world doesn't need it.