German Chancelor Angela Merkel arrives to participate in the G8 and G20 Summits Thursday, June 24, 2010 in Toronto.Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
The risk, narrowly averted this week, that the coalition government of Germany led by Chancellor Angela Merkel would collapse because of manoeuvres over the election of a new president illustrates the importance of keeping some distance between ceremonial heads of state and partisan politics.
A German president is elected in a secret ballot by a special assembly, the Federal Convention, half of which consists of the members of the equivalent of the House of Commons; the other half are delegates chosen by the equivalents of German legislatures – 1,244 in all.
Ms. Merkel's choice, Christian Wulff, who until this week was the premier of Hanover, was elected, but only on the third round. Two opposition parties tried with some success to outflank the Chancellor by putting forward a respected independent candidate, Joachim Gauck, who is in fact a friend of Ms. Merkel's, and who won votes from some members of her own party, the Christian Democratic Union, and as well as their coalition partners, the Free Democrats, who are discontented because their standing in polls has been waning. Some of the CDU members of the Federal Convention may have been expressing their misgivings about Ms. Merkel.
Mr. Gauck is a former East German Protestant pastor, who was a hero of the resistance against the Communist regime. Ironically, it was in the end the Left, the successor party to the Communists, that gave the victory to the candidate of the small-c conservative coalition government, Mr. Wulff, rather than support an admirable anti-Communist dissident, Mr. Gauck.
This political free-for-all has weakened the office of the ceremonial head of the state, in which some German presidents have successfully articulated a national conscience.
Ms. Merkel has been undermined by this latest presidential election, though Mr. Wulff may yet do a good job. For all the imperfections of Canada's process for choosing governor-generals hitherto, Canadians can be grateful for a form of government that does not tinge the Queen's representative with such a degree of blatant partisanism.