Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 66, was elected President of Germany for a second five-year term on Sunday. In the first ballot he has obtained 1,045 votes of the 1,437 deposited by the members of the Federal Assembly. His re-election was taken for granted after securing the support of the three parties that make up the government coalition, the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Liberal Party (FDP), and adding the support of the two Christian Democratic formations in opposition, the CDU and its Bavarian partner CSU.
In his speech, Steinmeier addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin, who maintains more than 100,000 troops and heavy weapons along the Ukraine border in what the West sees as a clear threat of invasion: “I want to warn Putin: don’t underestimate the strength of democracy. The German president dedicated the beginning of his speech to the conflict in Ukraine and recalled that the responsibility for the threat of a war in Eastern Europe rests with the Russian president. He added that the Kremlin “has to loosen the noose around Ukraine’s neck.” Steinmeier has warned that “peace should not be taken for granted; you have to work to preserve it” and that for this you have to persevere in dialogue but “when necessary you have to say things clearly, showing determination and dissuasion”.
The re-election of the social democratic politician was taken for granted. The conservatives, who had already supported Steinmeier in the first election, in 2017, gave up on presenting their own candidate. Steinmeier has faced three other candidates: the doctor Gerhard Trabert, proposed by the left-wing party Die Linke; the economist Max Otte, for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the physicist Stefanie Gebauer, of the Free Voters. The formations usually present candidacies even if they have no chance of winning because they take the opportunity to launch messages of political or social content.
In her opening speech, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas called for courage not to lose heart in the face of the many current crises. She referred to social tensions resulting from coronavirus restrictions, climate change and the crisis in Ukraine. “Let’s face it, fear doesn’t help,” she Bas said.
The German president is voted every five years by convening a body called the Federal Assembly whose sole task is to elect the head of state and only meets for that purpose. On this occasion, the assembly was made up of the current 736 members of Parliament and the same number of representatives from the 16 federal states, that is, 1,472 members, a record number. The participants are so many that the event could not be held in the Reichstag building and has been moved to a modern building of the German Parliament, the Paul-Löbe-Haus, located a few meters away.
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Among them, there are not only politicians; also relevant personalities of culture, science or sport. The Federal Republic has had 12 presidents since 1949, including no women. The Constitution only allows one re-election.
Among the people who have elected the president this year are, for example, the immunologist Özlem Türeci, co-founder of Biontech, the company that created the first vaccine against covid-19; the well-known German virologist Christian Drosten; Bayern Munich footballer Leon Goretzka, and pianist Igor Levit. Several nurses also participated in the assembly, as well as the former German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was the most requested by the guests to take photos and selfies with her during breaks in voting and counting.
Steinmeier, 66, is one of the politicians most highly valued by Germans. In a ZDF television poll this week, 85% of those polled believed that he has done a good job as federal president in his first term. The former leader of the Christian Democrats, Armin Laschet, highlighted in January, when he announced his support, Steinmeier’s experience in international politics and his ability to dialogue with other cultures.
Born in 1956 in Detmold, in North Rhine-Westphalia (west of the country), he held his first government post between 1999 and 2005 with the Executive of Gerhard Schröder, a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. He was Minister of the Foreign Ministry, one of the positions closest to the head of the Government.
In Angela Merkel’s first Grand Coalition Executive, he held the position of Foreign Minister. In the 2009 elections he ran against the chancellor as a Social Democratic candidate and after the defeat he became the parliamentary leader of the SPD. The following year, Steinmeier temporarily left his seat to undergo surgery to donate a kidney to his wife, Elke Büdenbender, a judge at the Berlin Administrative Court.
The federal president returned to government tasks in Merkel’s third Executive (2013-2017), which appointed him Foreign Minister again. His greatest success as the main representative of German diplomacy were the Minsk agreements, in which the conditions for peace (unfulfilled) in the east of Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists were established.
The German president exercises representative functions, both within the country and abroad, when he travels abroad and meets with foreign personalities. Among his tasks is to sign the laws and officially appoint the chancellor and the government ministers. While in office, he renounces membership in his political party.
Steinmeier has also played a mediating role between the different political forces since he took office as president. When the negotiations to form a government between the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens failed in the autumn of 2017, he managed to get the Social Democrats to agree to try a new grand coalition with Merkel’s party, appealing to their responsibility to avoid new elections. Analysts agree that he has known how to build bridges between the two main parties. “He is a man of the political center,” Angela Merkel said of him when in the fall of 2016 her formation announced that it would not present its own candidate for president.
The nomination of Otte, a member of the CDU, by the AfD, has caused a political earthquake among the conservatives, who, like the rest of the German parties, maintain a tight cordon sanitaire against the far-right party. The leadership of the formation has promised to expel Otte.
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