German Papers Bidding Schröder Farewell
Over seven million television viewers saw the tears well up in Gerhard Schröder's eyes as a military band played Sinatra's "I Did It My Way" at a farewell ceremony the army staged for him on Saturday. Newspaper commentators too seem sad at the departure of the "media chancellor" who never missed a photo opportunity and was always ready with a soundbite or a joke. Many worry things will be very different under his sober, serious successor Angela Merkel, who takes over on Tuesday.
Business newspaper Financial Times Deutschland invited three of its journalists to reminisce about Schröder. One recalls how the soccer-mad chancellor took a break from an economic summit meeting in Ottawa in 2002 to watch Germany play South Korea in a semi-final of the World Cup. The atmosphere quickly turned into that of a soccer stadium as Schröder, flanked by his staff and reporters who had travelled with him, shouted and cheered their way through the German team's narrow victory. He then hitched a lift in the Japanese prime minister's jet to see the final in Japan. "With Schröder's departure, a full-blooded politician is leaving the stage, someone who put his mark on Germany and changed it, a fighter," writes one journalist with a note of mourning.
Conservative daily Die Welt wonders what Merkel's style will be like. Will she pat foreign leaders on the back like predecessor Helmut Kohl did with Russia's Boris Yeltsin, or Schröder with Vladimir Putin? One thing is certain -- joint sauna visits can be ruled out, writes Die Welt: "It's harder for women politicians to make comradely gestures." Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was an exception because she had a grandmotherly way about her, but Merkel, 51, is too young for that. Schröder's meetings with French President Jacques Chirac, with their hugging and kissing and snorting, resembled encounters between two whales, writes Die Welt. If Merkel smiled at Chirac the way Schröder did, theirs would be mistaken for a different type of relationship. "As a woman Angela Merkel will bring sobriety to foreign policy. That need not be a bad thing," opines Die Welt.
Tabloid daily Bild Zeitung notes Merkel will move into Schröder's 140 square-meter office in the futuristic white concrete chancellery today ahead of her formal election as chancellor in parliament and subsequent swearing in on Tuesday. She won't be able to change the massive 150 kilogram crescent-shaped desk, though, because it has been screwed into the concrete floor. One of Schröder's favorite paintings, that of a falling eagle, which hung behind his desk, will be returned to the painter, Georg Baselitz, writes Bild.
Berliner Zeitung complains about plans by the new government to halve Christmas bonuses paid to civil servants from 2006 as part of a rigorous savings drive. The measure, which has yet to be approved, will outrage the public employee union and will herald the first major confrontation of Merkel's new government, the paper writes. Most Germans are likely to approve of the plans but the cliché that civil servants are lazy is unfair, writes the paper. Public employees have had to put up with a series of pay cuts in recent years and although that doesn't mean they should be exempt from more cuts, the reductions should be balanced. "A court security guard, who doesn't earn much more than a sales assistant, will be harder hit by a Christmas bonus cut than a professor," it comments.
Center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung agrees. Prison guards and police officers will feel the pain of halving Christmas bonuses more than well-heeled ministerial secretaries, the paper writes. The plan is a public relations exercise because it will tell the whole nation: "We're not just tightening your belts, we're cutting our own income too," comments Süddeutsche. Merkel and her ministers would also face lower bonuses. But simply cutting public pay is too unimaginative because it ignores the need for deeper reform of Germany's civil service, where many employees enjoy total job security -- a thing of the past in the private sector, writes the paper.
