BERLIN: Most Germans want President Christian Wulff to stay in office even if many were not convinced by his attempts this week to defuse the uproar over his efforts to quash an embarrassing newspaper story, a poll showed on Friday.
The survey for public broadcaster ARD showed that 56 percent of respondents believed Wulff should not resign over the scandal that risks damaging Chancellor Angela Merkel, who backed him for the presidency in 2010.
It was conducted on Thursday, a day after Wulff gave a television interview in which he acknowledged making a “grave mistake” by leaving a voicemail message for the editor of top-selling German newspaper Bild last month in a bid to stop publication of the story about his private home loan.
Some 61 percent of respondents said they were not convinced by Wulff’s efforts to stem the scandal, but the fact that a majority still support him means he is unlikely to go unless harmful new revelations emerge.
No one can force Wulff out unless it can be shown that he broke the law and Merkel, who is keen to avoid a divisive political debate over a successor, has expressed support for him through a spokesman.
And even the biggest opposition parties, the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens, have stopped short of calling for his ouster, although they have been highly critical of his conduct and of Merkel for having pushed him for the largely ceremonial post.
“I would like a clear word from the chancellor on whether Wulff still fulfils the expectations she has for the office of the president. After all, he was her candidate,” Hubertus Heil, deputy leader of the SPD in parliament, said on television.
Germans take the office of president seriously. The person in the post is expected to act as a moral authority for the nation, defending the constitution, including its commitment to press freedom.
Wulff, a former conservative premier of the state of Lower Saxony, is not totally out of the woods yet.
Bild disputes Wulff’s contention that he only sought to delay publication of the home loan story by a day, not kill it, and has threatened to release a transcript of the voicemail message the president left on editor Kai Diekmann’s phone last month.
Wulff refused to approve the release of the transcript on Thursday saying the voicemail was a private matter between him and Diekmann. (Reuters)