GERMANY: The former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr Horst Köhler, has become Germany's ninth post-war federal president after a narrow vote in the Bundestag yesterday, writes Derek Scally in Berlin
Mr Köhler (61) said he would use the largely ceremonial office of the president to invigorate Germany's ongoing reform debate and to help Germany reinvent itself as a knowledge-based society in the age of globalisation.
"Germany should become a land of ideas," said Mr Köhler in his acceptance speech. "In the 21st century it means more than the land of poets and philosophers, more than 'Made in Germany' ... instead courage, creativity and a desire for the new without excluding the old."
He said that only a positive resolution of Germany's tortuous patriotism debate could help the country find its inner strength.
"I love our country," said Mr Köhler with an emotional directness rarely heard from German public figures.
"Patriotism and liberal-mindedness are not contrasting values, they necessitate each other ... We have to get over our angst and win back confidence. We can do many things in Germany. But for that we first have to trust ourselves more."
Mr Köhler, the candidate of the opposition Christian Democrats, beat his Social Democrat rival, Prof Gesina Schwan, after yesterday's vote of the 1,205-member Federal Convention, a body which meets every five years to elect the new head of state.
As the conservatives control the upper house, the Bundesrat, the present convention has a 19-seat conservative majority. But Mr Köhler was elected with a majority of just two votes, showing that several conservatives voted against him.
The ruling Social Democrats congratulated Mr Köhler on his victory and offered to work closely with him, while opposition leaders called the victory of their candidate the beginning of the end for the SPD-Green coalition.
"This is a turning point," said Mr Edmund Stoiber, leader of Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU).
Mr Köhler flatly rejected this analysis, saying: "I don't see myself that way at all. I am a non-political candidate, not an instrument of the handover of power. I do not let myself be instrumentalised."
Before moving to the IMF in Washington, Mr Köhler was one of former Chancellor Kohl's closest advisers and oversaw the post-unification currency union. Mr Köhler, an economist, is the first non-politician to be elected to Germany's highest office.