Joachim Gauck, 72, an East German Lutheran pastor and human rights activist nominated as Germany’s next president, hopes to restore faith in the office after damaging scandals toppled his predecessor. Gauck, expected to be rubber stamped in the largely ceremonial post in the coming weeks after winning backing from all major political parties, replaces Christian Wulff, who resigned Friday amid a series of financing allegations. Hailed as “the president of hearts” by the top-selling Bild daily, the popular, grey-haired, genial and softly-spoken East German was a leading figure in the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Describing himself as a “conservative from the liberal left”, Gauck appeals to all sides of the political spectrum in Germany and to the people themselves, over half of whom wanted to see him as president, according to recent polls. As a candidate for the post in 2010, the two most influential media outlets in the country, newsweekly Spiegel and Bild, described him respectively as “the better president” and “the president of hearts”. However, he lost that election to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s handpicked candidate for the post, Christian Wulff, who became embroiled in scandal and was eventually forced from office under a prosecutor’s investigation. Prosecutors in Lower Saxony state where Wulff was formerly premier said Thursday they had taken the unprecedented move of asking parliament to lift his immunity to probe allegations he enjoyed favours from a film producer friend.
