Pressure grows on Merkel ally in plagiarism row
BERLIN (Reuters) - Criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel's defence minister mounted Sunday when a member of his own centre-right bloc expressed doubts over whether the popular politician could survive a plagiarism row.
The breaking of ranks by a fellow conservative added weight to the sinking popularity of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a star politician who was stripped of his doctorate last week after apologising for errors he made with attributions.
"There will always be people who find pleasure in publicly blaming him for mistakes in his doctorate," Saxony-Anhalt State Premier Wolfgang Boehmer said in the newspaper Tagesspiegel. "I don't know how long he will be able to endure it."
Guttenberg, who has been consistently rated Germany's most popular politician in polls and sometimes named as a possible future chancellor, has rejected opposition demands to resign over a scandal that has dominated headlines and talk shows.
Political analysts have said the "Copygate" affair could damage Merkel's conservatives in six regional elections this year since the aristocratic Guttenberg had been a rare bright spot, his popularity based on an image of honesty and integrity.
Academics lined up to criticise Guttenberg at the weekend, with the present and former heads of a leading German research association saying his actions set a bad example for students and undermined his ability to speak to soldiers about virtue.
The successor to his doctorate supervisor at Bayreuth University made the strongest criticism, saying Guttenberg systematically plagiarised then purported to know nothing about what he'd done.
"We have been taken by a fraud," Professor Oliver Lepsius said in the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "His brazenness in deceiving honourable university personnel was unique."
PROTESTERS WAVE SHOES IN CONTEMPT
Guttenberg, 39, has rejected charges of plagiarism, insisting he did not deceive anyone deliberately in his dissertation on constitutional law, although his PhD title was withdrawn formally for violation of attribution requirements.
His popularity in a weekly ZDF Politbarometer poll fell last week from +2.0 to +1.4 on an overall scale of +5 to -5, a remarkably steep one-week drop. He now shared the top popularity ranking for politicians with Merkel, who also stood at +1.4.
The scandal may cause further headaches for Merkel's conservatives. The ZDF poll showed the opposition Social Democrats gaining two percentage points in the past week following a landslide victory over the conservatives in a regional election in Hamburg last Sunday.
So far, Merkel has stood by Guttenberg, saying she chose him for her cabinet for his political skills and not because she needed an "academic assistant." Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, another political heavyweight, has also lent support.
"My young colleague will recover again," Schaeuble said in Focus news magazine. Guttenberg has overcome several other setbacks as defence minister, including criticism of his handling of an air strike in Afghanistan which killed civilians.
Saturday, hundreds of protesters in Berlin called for Guttenberg's resignation, some waving shoes in the air to mimic protests in Arab countries, others carrying banners that read "Gutt-bye," and "Cheating is not a footnote."
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)