Angela Merkel's future 'in real danger' as battle for German presidency looms

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has chosen her candidate to fill the vacant president's post – and may have written her own political death warrant with it.

The 30 June election could turn into a debacle for the besieged premier who is reeling over her handling of the Greek debt crisis, a kicking in a vital regional poll in May and now struggling to hold back the unions and the Left as she seeks to trim a staggering 80 billion (66 billion) from the national budget over the next four years.

"Merkel, a master tactician when it comes to the politics of power, has been outmanoeuvred for once, and could get into serious trouble as a result," said the influential news magazine Der Spiegel about the upcoming presidential vote.

Mrs Merkel needed to find a replacement for Horst Koehler, who quit on 31 May amid controversy over comments he made linking Germany's Afghanistan mission with commerce.

The chancellor wanted her families minister Ursual von der Leyen to take the post. A stalwart ally and reformer like herself, Mrs Merkel also saw the attraction of being the first all-female power duo leading the economic locomotive of Europe.

But her hard-line fellow conservatives instead insisted on Christian Wulff, the governor of the northern state of Lower Saxony. He is far enough to the Right to satisfy those in the ruling CDU party who feel Mrs Merkel has gone too far to the Left.

Now the opposition SPD Social Democrats and the Greens have put up a rival candidate that could demolish Mr Wulff's chances of victory – chosen after Mrs Merkel snubbed an offer to agree on a compromise nominee for the presidency.

Joachim Gauck is the former Communist opponent of East Germany who many of the chancellor's own supporters now prefer as president to Mr Wulff.

Mr Gauck, 70 – who Mrs Merkel has praised in the past – established the Stasi secret police archives in Berlin after the Wall fell. Now he has received the backing of large sections of the German media and, publicly, even members of her FDP coalition partner.

"They have raised the prospect of defying party lines to vote for him, and that is bad news for Mrs Merkel and her career prospects," one political commentator said.

"Newspapers have been comparing the biographies of the two contenders and many have concluded that Gauck has much more to offer the nation," said Der Spiegel.

It will take just 22 rebels in the CDU to thwart Mr Wulff's presidential ambitions. That alone would hugely damage Mrs Merkel's authority.

The centre-left Sddeutsche Zeitung in Munich said: "If Wulff isn't elected in the first or second round of voting in which the absolute majority is necessary, there would be a massive resurgence of the leadership debate."

The mass circulation tabloid Bild said: "If Gauck wins, it will be the knock-out blow for the centre-right coalition."

A Gauck victory would almost certainly trigger a leadership challenge just as Mrs Merkel's coalition gears up for a long summer of feuding with the unions over the austerity budget that promises to axe jobs and pensions for thousands of public workers.