GERMANY: German Social Democrat (SPD) leader Matthias Platzeck is nearing the end of his 100-day honeymoon and faces his first challenge in looming state elections at a time of falling poll ratings.
SPD members have been anxious to give Mr Platzeck a chance to grow into the job after losing their previous leader and their chancellor in quick succession last autumn.
The party is adjusting to life in the grand coalition with the Christian Democrats (CDU) but, after finishing almost neck-and-neck on election night, the SPD has now dropped to 30 per cent in the polls while the CDU has soared to over 40 per cent.
Poll highs and lows are normally of little concern so soon after a general election, but three state elections next month could provide uncomfortable evidence of the SPD's slide.
Meanwhile, after pushing hard in last autumn's coalition talks to secure the key ministries of finance, foreign affairs, justice and labour, there is a growing perception that the SPD ministers are being eclipsed in the media by CDU colleagues.
"What it can't come to is that we're in the kitchen chopping onions while the CDU's out front pocketing the tips," complained SPD executive council member Ludwig Stiegler to Der Spiegel magazine.
The man whose job it is to address these concerns is Mr Platzeck, a mathematician from the same "1989 generation" of politicians as Angela Merkel.
Just 16 years after joining the SPD, he became party chairman in October after a political intrigue ended the 20-month reign of his predecessor, Franz Müntefering.
Mr Platzeck promised members he would be "less focused on ideology and be more about what's practicable", light years away from Gerhard Schröder, whose speeches as party leader mixed tearful appeals with sweaty threats.
Mr Schröder convinced the party to back his social reforms but he never succeeded in uniting the party's left and right behind him.
Political scientist Prof Uwe Jun says Mr Platzeck has rejected the top-down leadership style of recent years to help unite the fractured factions. "Platzeck is building up, step-by-step, the SPD's content profile at party conferences," he said.
The approach has won praise from the SPD's left and right.
"The SPD has 140 years of history, so we look on these things with a certain composure. Politics isn't an instant soup you pour hot water on," said Dr Ernst Dieter Rossmann, spokesman for the SPD left-wing in parliament.
Johannes Kahrs, spokesman for the SPD right-wing, said: "He's at the start of a process and the result comes at the end. You can't predict the result at the beginning."
Two leading political scientists have criticised Mr Platzeck this week for being "too far in the background" while Der Spiegel suggested that Mr Platzeck's "visibility problem" is a consequence of the new SPD leadership troika.
As state premier of Brandenburg, near Berlin, he doesn't lead the party at the federal cabinet table, a job filled by Mr Müntefering, now labour minister and vice-chancellor. Neither is Mr Platzeck responsible for the SPD parliamentary party in the Bundestag; that's the job of former defence minister Peter Struck.
Later this month, Mr Platzeck will visit Downing Street to establish his foreign profile and his advisers say we can expect more statements on issues from EU social policy to energy policy in the coming months.
All this is timed to coincide with chancellor Merkel's return from a victorious international tour to the urgent domestic problems awaiting attention in Berlin, problems SPD officials hope will dull some of the new German leader's new-found dazzle.