2009 YEARENDER: Merkel's great year will be a hard act to follow

Dec 31, 2009, 14:30 GMT

   Berlin - Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, will have a tough time topping the glory of 2009, the year when she held centre stage on the poignant anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.

   During the November 9 anniversary of the communist decision in 1989 that led to the demolition of the Berlin Wall, Merkel was perfectly cast: as a 35-year-old physicist, she was one of the first East Germans to stream through the concrete barrier 20 years ago.

   'I went to the sauna, like I used to do every Thursday night. When I got home again, I heard that the border crossing was open. So I ran straight down there and crossed over to the West with thousands of other people,' she recalled in her typical down-to-earth style.

   Before she got home again late at night, elated West Berlin people had invited her into their apartment. They thrust a can of beer into her hand, little knowing that they had their future leader sitting on their sofa.

   Though she never seems to grab the limelight as French President Nicolas Sarkozy does, the limelight always seems to grab Merkel.

   Amid a huge crowd, Merkel, now 55, revisited the former crossing, which has become a busy arterial road 20 years later.

   In the November drizzle, it was a poignant moment where history came full circle. She was accompanied by the man who made German reunification possible, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

   A couple of hours later, Merkel smiled modestly as most of Europe's contemporary leaders massed around her at Berlin's landmark Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the end of the old divisions.

   Facing a lacklustre opposition, Merkel was swept back into power in the September 27 general election, despite a sinking economy.

   Her Christian Democrat (CDU/CSU) bloc suffered only a modest 1.4-percentage-point slip in national voter support to 33.8 per cent compared with their result in 2005.

   Elsewhere in the world, voters were angry about the recession. In Germany, layoffs had been held in check by a government scheme to top up wages for those switching from full-time to part-time work, and Merkel, a conservative, remained broadly popular.

   Some economists predict unemployment will not actually spike until next year, at the very time when German export industries enjoy renewed growth, because Germany's heavily regulated labour market changes so slowly in response to the world economy.

   Merkel's poll success this year allowed her to dump the left-of-centre Social Democrats, a coalition partner she felt uncomfortable with, and form an alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) led by Guido Westerwelle, now German foreign minister.

   With their political philosophies similar, they swiftly agreed on coalition terms. The cabinet was sworn in 12 days before the Wall anniversary. But it has not been all plain sailing for Merkel since then.

One minister, Franz Josef Jung, had to resign the labour portfolio after just four weeks in office when it emerged there had been a cover-up of details about a September 4 airstrike in Afghanistan.

Dozens of civilians were killed by the bombs, but Jung, who was defence minister at the time, said the dead were probably Taliban. The head of the armed forces also resigned. Merkel is likely to face further questions about what she herself knew.

   There has also been tussling in the new government over a planned museum about the refugee experience.

   What might normally seem an obscure arts funding issue could prove political dynamite, because the federally funded museum in Berlin is to show how 14 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland and other eastern European nations after the Second World War.

   Warsaw has given up its objections to the museum, but not to an outspoken leader of the expellees, Erika Steinbach, 66, serving on the museum board. When younger, Steinbach supported recovery of lost lands, and some Poles suggest her change of heart is not genuine.

   Westerwelle, who made Poland his first port of call, visiting it three days after he took office, has bluntly echoed Warsaw's concerns. He threatened to veto Steinbach if the Merkel cabinet tried to co-opt her to the museum board.

   Merkel, who had made a pre-election promise to appoint Steinbach, promptly took the issue off the cabinet agenda.

   The Federation of Expellees, whose members predominantly vote CDU/CSU, replied that they would hold off forcing the issue - by formally nominating Steinbach - till the start of next year.