German President Christian Wulff, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, faced calls for his resignation Tuesday over a home loan scandal and allegations he tried to hush up the story. Wulff, 52, has been hit by accusations he intervened to try to stop mass circulation newspaper Bild revealing details last month of a personal loan he had received from a tycoon friend’s wife.
He left a furious message on the voicemail of Bild’s powerful editor Kai Diekmann threatening legal action and also reportedly contacted the chief executive of Bild’s publishing house Axel Springer and its main shareholder.
According to media reports, the president told Diekmann that if Bild wanted to “wage war”, they could discuss it when he returned from a trip to Kuwait, from where he made the call. Amid rising anger at a perceived attack on press freedom, the Financial Times Deutschland said he should step down.
“Everything taken together, it’s slowly becoming too much … his credibility has been hit by this plethora of mistakes. A man who is dragging around such a burden can no longer remain president,” the FTD said. In a hastily called four-minute television statement in December, Wulff had tried to draw a line under the scandal, admitting he should have disclosed a loan from the wife of business leader Egon Geerkens.
While governing the state of Lower Saxony, he denied having business ties to Geerkens despite having accepted the loan at an advantageous interest rate from his wife to buy a home. Merkel has thus far defended Wulff. Her office, contacted by AFP on Tuesday, declined further comment. However, the Weser-Kurier regional daily said:
“At some stage, the chancellor will have to make the cold calculation that his presence in the office is harming her and the country more than a second resignation.” Germany was rocked in May 2010 when then president Horst Koehler suddenly stepped down after appearing to suggest German troops abroad were defending Berlin’s economic interests.
Merkel invested a great deal of political capital to push through Wulff’s subsequent election, which turned into a debacle for her, as members of her own coalition broke ranks and refused to vote for him in parliament.
A resignation “is the last thing she (Merkel) needs at the start of a difficult year during which she will be struggling to contain the euro crisis,” noted news weekly Spiegel on its website. The embattled Wulff faced criticism even from the deputy head of his own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in Lower Saxony.
