SHARE
COPY LINK
OPINION

PRESIDENT

Gauck ‘cannot afford to be vague on Russia’

President Joachim Gauck is not being clear enough in his decision to boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics. As a citizen he can afford a lack of clarity, but as head of state he cannot, the Tagesspiegel's Stephan-Andreas Casdorff argues.

Gauck 'cannot afford to be vague on Russia'
President Gauck has been too vague over this decision to miss the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year. Photo: DPA

At first glance it was a clear signal, wasn't it? Joachim Gauck will not travel to Sochi for the Winter Olympics. It must have meant the German President was really showing the Russian President Vladimir Putin what a human rights campaigner thought of someone who tramples on those rights.

But no, that was not how it was meant. The President's office was astoundingly quick in at least partly playing down a move that probably had initially been meant as a gesture. He has done this a couple of times with domestic and foreign affairs.

It seems the question of how Joachim Gauck should understand his role needs to be discussed – and this would be best done by those who put him in office because only then could misunderstandings be avoided with those who rule – and those who will rule in the future.

In the case of Sochi, it was on the one hand, citizen Gauck making a decision. On the other, President Gauck was seen to have done so. Either way, he should have decided how he wanted to be understood.

Did he as president want to send a signal? Then he should at least stand up for his decision and argue in its favour.

It would then of course have been a top level policy tweak – he would change the style and tone and fundamental position of the government. A Foreign Minister, [Frank-Walter] Steinmeier to just take one example, would probably not have been so happy about it.

There are many things in the world – from Syria to the NSA – which are too important for the relationship with Russia to be put on ice.

But even when a person wants to stick it to Russia and Vladimir Putin, the question remains – who and how? Joachim who?

Hardly anyone knows him in Moscow. Would it not have been better, particularly for someone who sees themselves as a human rights campaigner, to confront Putin with directly? What other human rights campaigner could do that?

At least Gauck could have spoken in defence of human and civil rights campaigns in the country. This would have helped them more than his current signal of a general unwillingness.

And Gauck is also doing the Paralympics a great disservice. Disabilities are often, like so many other things, a non-topic in Russia – more than that, people often live in shame, often hidden away.

Is he going to refuse to go to these Winter Games rather than to use the chance to promote human rights? The President could at least have wrung something political out of his visit, have pushed President Putin into a promise of sorts.

But because he is not behaving clearly, he leaves too much room for interpretation, including the interpretation that he is deliberately seeking to offend Vladimir Putin.

As a citizen he can afford that. As head of state he cannot. He must consider the interests of the country and speak for the country. The country's athletes are travelling to Sochi – he is leaving them standing there like accessories.

READ MORE: President boycotts Russia Winter Olympics

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

PRESIDENT

France: Final farewell for Chirac in family’s home village

Former French President Jacques Chirac's family bade him a final farewell Saturday at an intimate ceremony in the southwestern village where he grew up.

France: Final farewell for Chirac in family's home village
GEORGES GOBET / AFP

“I can only say thank you in the name of my father and mother,” the statesman's daughter Claude Chirac said in a tearful address at Sainte-Fereole, a small village in the Chirac fiefdom of the Correze region.

“In childhood and adolescence, Jacques Chirac was made here,” said mayor Henri Soulier.

Born in Paris, Chirac, who died aged 86 on September 26, moved as a young boy to Sainte-Fereole where he was elected a municipal councillor in 1965 before becoming a Correze lawmaker two years later.

He continued to represent the Correze department until becoming president in 1995, serving as head of state until 2007.

Chirac's widow Bernadette, 86, did not attend the gathering of some 200 people in a picturesque village square decked out in portraits of the former president showing key moments of his life in public service.

Soulier said he had proposed and Chirac's family had agreed to rename the square after him in the village which they had insisted would be the site of the final homage to his life.

Prior to the ceremony, local leaders had accompanied the family to lay a wreath at the tomb of Chirac's parents.

The group then stopped by the village hall and the family home, of which Claude Chirac's husband Frederic Salat-Baroux vowed “we shall never sell this house. One is always from somewhere and, for Claude, that's here.”

Claude recalled how she was “often at Sainte-Fereole with Laurence,” Chirac's other daughter, who died in 2016.

“We would leave Paris on Friday and our parents would leave us there before travelling around the department,” she recalled.

“My mother is very emotional today that she cannot come … it's an exceptional homage. It is very comforting to her. And I want to say thank you for that because she really needs it,” Claude said.

Local authorities said meanwhile some 3,000 people had participated in a day of “memory and friendship” to honour Chirac at nearby Sarran, where Bernadette was first elected a municipal councillor in 1971 and which houses a museum dedicated to his life.

Among those attending Saturday was former Socialist president Francois Hollande, who was a political rival of Chirac in Correze, as well as Chirac's grandson Martin Rey-Chirac.

Dozens of world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, last Monday paid their final respects at a funeral service in Paris alongside dignitaries including former US president Bill Clinton, a day after 7,000 people queued to view Chirac's coffin at Invalides military hospital and museum.

He was then laid to rest at a cemetery at Montparnasse in Paris.

SHOW COMMENTS