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Merkel ally's resignation may come as a relief

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 12:54 GMT

Source: reuters // Reuters

* Westerwelle holds onto ministry post for now

* Source says his departure met by sense of relief

* Merkel's coalition with FDP has been fraught By Stephen Brown and Eric Kelsey

BERLIN, April 4 (Reuters) - The resignation of Angela Merkel's main coalition partner Guido Westerwelle as leader of the Free Democrats could be a relief for Germany's chancellor, who may also need a new foreign minister if his party ousts him.

One government source spoke of a sense of relief in Berlin that Westerwelle had accepted "the inevitable" by resigning as head of the FDP, junior partner in Merkel's coalition, after state election failures and a long-simmering internal revolt.

Westerwelle also relinquished his post as deputy chancellor, which generally goes with the leadership of the second force in the ruling coalition, but hoped to hang onto his cabinet post.

However, it was unclear whether his low popularity ratings and the dissatisfaction in the FDP would leave enough support to remain foreign minister -- where the 49-year-old has not shone.

Westerwelle was embarrassed by Wikileaks of U.S. diplomatic cables last year calling him vain and arrogant and has been criticised for isolating Germany within NATO with the abstention from a U.N. vote authorising military action over Libya.

"It's good for Merkel because Westerwelle has lost so much trust in his party she could not be sure they would follow the government's lead, which would be very damaging," said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University.

With German coalition politics requiring whoever leads the junior partner to Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) to hold a suitably senior cabinet post, it was possible that Westerwelle or the FDP Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle could be removed.

Dirk Schumacher, senior European economist at Goldman Sachs, said in a research note it was too soon to say what implications Westerwelle's departure would have on the government, "not least as the CDU is also struggling to find out what lessons should be learned from the losses in the recent regional elections".

USING IT TO HER ADVANTAGE

State election defeats last year cost Merkel her majority in the upper house of parliament or Bundesrat and the government suffered a fresh humiliation in the conservative heartland of Baden-Wuerttemberg on March 27 at the hands of the Greens.

This cast a cloud on Merkel's own leadership of the CDU, but she may be able to shift some of the blame onto the regional party leadership and the FDP's poor performance. Westerwelle's resignation could help her draw a line under the episode.

Westerwelle said giving up the job he has held for a decade was made easier by the presence of "a whole number of young personalities ready to take over the leadership of the party".

The favourites to replace him as party leader of the FDP -- and therefore as deputy chancellor -- are 38-year-old Health Minister Philipp Roesler and FDP Secretary General Christian Lindner, who is 32.

"Merkel can only use Westerwelle's resignation to her advantage if she is able to find someone new with whom she can govern," said Gerd Langguth, a political scientist at Bonn University and a Merkel biographer.

One FDP rebel last year called Westerwelle a "millstone round the neck" of the party. He weighed on the popularity of the coalition, ranking as Germany's most unpopular politician and oversaw the FDP's sharp decline in opinion polls.

EUROSCEPTIC ELEMENTS

After leading it to a record 14.6 percent of the vote in the 2009 elections that got Merkel re-elected, Westerwelle was then unable to stop the rot as the FDP tumbled in opinion polls to 5 percent, the threshold for getting a seat in parliament.

Calling itself the "Liberal" party but nicknamed the "party of doctors and dentists" by those who argue it just represents the affluent, the FDP tried to renew its appeal by talking tough on funding bailouts for Germany's struggling euro zone partners.

But Werner Hoyer, an FDP junior minister under Westerwelle, told Reuters last week that eurosceptic voices in the party were isolated, it would back euro rescue schemes and "there will be no German nationalist regression in the FDP." [ID:nLDE72U1LK] As the FDP has come to look less attractive as a partner, the Greens -- benefiting from anti-nuclear sentiment to oust the CDU from power in Baden-Wuerttemberg, a conservative bastion for six decades -- could be a long-term solution.

The CDU and Greens have already tried cohabitation at state level in Hamburg, which fell apart. However, Merkel's U-turn on nuclear power after the Japanese earthquake could yet make that an option in time for the next federal elections in 2013.

With the CDU turning greener and the Greens showing they can appeal to conservatives, Merkel could attempt to break up the traditional Social Democrat-Greens alliance, though Neugebauer cautioned it would be "very difficult to sell within her party". (Additional reporting by Thorsten Severin, Andreas Rinke and Christiaan Hetzner; writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)