Coming clean
January 4, 2012
German President Christian Wulff will grant an interview to German public television only on Wednesday evening, to address allegations he tried to persuade a newspaper to hold a story about a private home loan scandal.
Wednesday is Wulff's first day back on the job after the holidays. The interview will be broadcast on Germany's two public TV channels, ARD and ZDF, simultaneously, but not on any private networks.
Since the allegations were made that Wulff left a furious voicemail with the editor of the Bild newspaper threatening legal action if the story ran, calls have become louder for Wulff to step down.
On Wednesday, however, German Chancellor Angela Merkel lent her support to Wulff ahead of his address to the media.
"The chancellor has full confidence that the president will comprehensively answer all remaining questions," deputy government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday.
Calls to step down
Some members of Merkel's own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) did not side with the chancellor. Vera Lengsfeld, a CDU parliamentarian, directly called for Wulff to step down on Wednesday.
"The overwhelming majority of the population can no longer take him seriously," she said in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper. "No new revelations are required to be certain that Wulff must go."
However, the head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), did lend his support to Wulff.
"The allegations on the table can only be answered by the president himself," said Horst Seehofer on the sidelines of a meeting of the CSU politicians on the Bavarian city of Kreuth. "The CSU is standing by President Christian Wulff, and he has our trust."
Wulff was already in a difficult political position before his alleged threatening phone call to Bild. Last month it was revealed he did not disclose all details of a private home loan he made with the wife of a prominent business man during Wulff's time as state premier in Lower Saxony.
Earlier in the week, several of Wulff's former party colleagues in the state assembly expressed their disappointment in the new allegations.
Author: Matt Zuvela (Reuters, dpa)
Editor: Nicole Goebel