Berlin's charismatic and openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, is tipped to secure re-election in a vote on Sunday, but the question on German minds is whether he is destined one day to be their chancellor.

Despite high unemployment in Berlin and a gaping public deficit, the 52-year-old Social Democrat (SPD) is expected to repeat his 2001 election success and renew his coalition with the PDS, which are rooted in former East Germany.

A victory would likely give Wowereit, or "Wowi" as he is known in his hometown of Berlin, more influence in the upper echelons of the SPD, a party depleted since the departure of Gerhard Schroeder.

"I would like to have more say than I have had in the last five years, when we had to clean this town up," Wowereit told the "Stern" magazine in a recent interview.

The former lawyer has been helped by the success of recent events like the soccer World Cup and has been credited with successfully pushing Berlin as a tourist destination.

The once-divided city is poor but sexy, its mayor likes to claim, alluding to Berlin's edgy, artistic side and its US$76 billion in debts.

With the SPD casting around for the next generation of leaders, analysts say that Wowereit's bid for more influence has marked him as a potential chancellor candidate in 2014 or earlier if party leader Kurt Beck bows out.

"The media is putting together a second line of potential chancellor candidates," said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University. "Wowereit is saying: I belong in that list too."

Conservative parting?

Since his election in 2001, he has worked hard to dispel his reputation as a political lightweight and a keen party-goer.

On recent campaign posters, he appears statesman-like, his hair greying and parted conservatively on the side a far cry from tabloid photos of his party antics, such as one of him clutching a red high-heeled shoe in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other.

Like his gay Parisian counterpart Bertrand Delanoe, Wowereit's homosexuality has not hindered him.

In fact, his outing in 2001 precipitated by concerns the press would get there first is remembered for the words he used which have since attained cult status: "I'm gay and that's a good thing."

"It plays less and less of a role," Neugebauer said. "There is of course town and country, Protestant and Catholic, but lifestyle is no longer a factor that splits people."

Among voters, he is among the most popular of the 16 state premiers an honour he shares with SPD colleagues Matthias Platzeck of Brandenburg and Kurt Beck of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Around 60 per cent of Berlin voters in a recent survey said they supported Wowereit as mayor, while just over 20 per cent backed conservative candidate, Friedbert Pflueger.

Pflueger has been plagued by his decision to support Bonn over Berlin as the German capital after reunification in 1990.

(China Daily 09/14/2006 page6)