By Florian Gathmann, Matthias Gebauer and Veit Medick
The first month of Chancellor Merkel's second term has not exactly been smooth.
Chancellor Angela Merkel likely imagined the first week of advent wouldn't start quite like this. On Monday, she was at Bellevue Palace -- the residence of German President Horst Köhler -- with a forced smile firmly installed on her face. The Christmas tree has already been installed in the palace foyer, but Merkel was not there for festivities. Rather, Monday was when Franz Josef Jung, who resigned from Merkel's cabinet on Friday, was officially released from his duties.
"All the best," Merkel told Jung, who, like the chancellor, is a member of the conservative Christian Democrats. Jung, who had never quite seemed comfortable during his stint at the pinnacle of German politics, seemed almost pleased to relinquish his official duties, relieved to be leaving the Berlin pressure cooker behind. Merkel, for her part, hurried to her car and sped off.
For the chancellor, the pressure only promises to get worse. Jung tripped up over the German-ordered bombing of two tanker-trucks in Afghanistan which resulted in dozens of civilian deaths. He resigned from his position as labor minister, but he was defense minister in early September when the bombing occurred. Jung was the third person to lose his job over the incident -- Germany's top soldier, Bundeswehr Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Deputy Defense Minister Peter Wichert also resigned last week -- but pressure has only grown on Merkel's new Defense Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg. And on Merkel herself.
Merkel sought to avoid the impression that she had forced Jung out. Had she been strident in her critique of her party ally, it may have looked as though further steps were necessary -- as though she too carried some responsibility. In the end, Jung resigned of his own accord leaving Merkel the opportunity to praise him for being a "fine man."
Sights Now Set on Merkel
But the chancellor miscalculated. Just a month into her second term in office, the affair surrounding the Kunduz bombing has spun out of control -- and the Merkel System is insufficiently equipped to deal with such a dynamic.
That has left the door wide open for Germany's opposition. With Jung out of the way, the center-left opposition is focusing its rage on Guttenberg and on Merkel herself. Over the weekend, both the Green Party and the Social Democrats argued that Merkel should have taken more responsibility for the incident -- the largest German-ordered bombardment since World War II.
Green Party floor leader Jürgen Trittin said that Merkel should have taken charge of the situation immediately after the airstrike, which took place on Sept. 4 in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. Instead, Merkel said nothing -- even as Jung continued denying that there had been civilian victims for days after the attack despite the existence of reports to the contrary. "It is the responsibility of the chancellor that it got so far out of control," Trittin said. SPD head Sigmar Gabriel called Jung a scapegoat, adding "the matter is not yet closed."
The government got a taste of the questions about when Merkel knew what on Monday morning with a report in the Cologne daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The paper reported that military advisors in the Chancellery had evaluated the incident and come to the conclusion, prior to German general election on Sept. 27, that the Kunduz bombing was inappropriate and that Colonel Georg Klein, who ordered the attack, would likely have to answer before a German court. The chancellery denied the report but Merkel's spokesman faced half an hour of persistent questioning on the matter at Monday's regular press briefing.
Warming Up for a Parliamentary Inquiry
The question-and-answer session was like a warm-up session for the coming weeks. Reporters keep wanting to know at what point the chancellor started having doubts about the assurances given by her the defence minister at the time, Franz Josef Jung, that nothing had gone wrong in the Kunduz air strike.
She faces an unpleasant appearance before the parliamentary committee conducting an inquiry into the Kunduz bombing. The SPD said the role of the chancellery needed to be examined. Michael Hartmann, an SPD member of parliament said: "If the reports are correct, the chancellor will have to go before the investigating committee." And Omid Nouripour, a member of the opposition Greens, said: "Everything runs towards Merkel."
Ironically, the basis for the questioning is likely to be one of the speeches for which Merkel won most praise. On September 8, four days after the air strike, Merkel gave a statement to parliament about Afghanistan. In that speech she rejected the fierce foreign criticism of the airstrikes but did not rule out that there may have been civilian victims. "There are contradictory reports about the impact, especially regarding civilian victims," Merkel said.
This non-committal formulation could present Merkel with problems. The flow of information through the Defense Ministry may have been chaotic but it's now clear that the "Initial Action Team" report by a NATO delegation investigating the air strike had already reached Berlin before she held her speech. The 27-page report, written on Sept. 6, received in Berlin on Sept. 7, gave a detailed account of the bombing, of the mistakes made before the attack order was given and the estimates of the number of victims. The report states on its first page: "There is a very high probability that there were civilian casualties."
SPD Sees Opportunity to Score Points
These and many other details from the emerging documents amount to ideal material for a juicy questioning session in the committee. The questions are clear: At the time of her speech, did Merkel know about NATO's first official report? If not: How can it be that the chancellor did not have such a key document before making a government statement to parliament on the matter? May her interest in clearly stating the facts have been limited? Did Merkel really mean what she said when she declared in her speech "we won't embellish anything"?
The SPD is already eagerly discussing all these questions which are to form the main focus of the committee's investigation. The case is an opportunity for the SPD to boost its standing after its humiliating election defeat. Merkel now quickly needs to find an approach for handling the inquiry. At the end of last week she looked taken aback, almost perturbed. She has seemed distracted and absent since last Thursday's turbulent debate in parliament.
Jung's resignation speech ended with a sentence that befitted the situation. "With this step I want to contribute towards ensuring that the government can continue its successful work unobstructed," he said. That's something Merkel will be sincerely hoping.
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
