The two leaders of Germany's major parties, bedfellows in the country's imminent "grand coalition" government have much in common -- both are 51-year-old former scientists from Protestant families in the former East Germany.

Yesterday's German press expressed the hope that this, and the fact that both are relative "outsiders" who rocketed to the top of Germany's chief parties, could make the left-right government a success.

The Social Democrats (SPD) elected their first East German party chairman Matthias Platzeck yesterday, one day after Germany's new ruling parties cleared the way for Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel to become the reunited country's first leader from the former East Germany.

Platzeck, the premier of Brandenburg state surrounding Berlin, is viewed as a pragmatist and an economic reformer who will be able to work well with Merkel, who grew up in Brandenburg.

"No one seriously expected Matthias Platzeck to become party chairman, just as no one thought after the Kohl era that Angela Merkel would be CDU party leader," news weekly Der Spiegel wrote, referring to her mentor, former chancellor Helmut Kohl.

"Both are the product of a highly unusual power constellation, and now they could make a difference together."

But despite Monday's show of unity, the media continued to look sceptically at what the bipartisan government could accomplish to energize the faltering economy, slash the 11-percent unemployment rate and cut the spiralling deficit.

Like many critics from across the political spectrum, the center-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung zeroed in on plans included in the government pact to raise the value-added tax three points to 19 percent in 2007.

"It is above all doubtful whether the economy will get back on its feet quickly," it said in an editorial published yesterday.

"Will there really be a sales boom in 2006 because people want to head off the higher VAT? Or will they continue to refuse to shop because they fear the tax shock in the years to come? The new coalition does not make it easy to have faith."

"The coalition pact is a first base for the new government, no more, no less," said the Maerkische Allgemeine in Brandenburg's state capital Potsdam.

"Other reforms must follow quickly because the measures which have been taken so far will hardly be enough to trigger a lasting recovery and a drop in unemployment."

"The grand coalition has found that it has a majority and that's what counts for the moment," said the business daily Financial Times Deutschland after the Social Democrats and the two-party Christian Union bloc agreed to the government pact.

"But there is no hiding the fact that these springtime ideas cannot be enough to hold a coalition together. It needs a representation and a working arrangement that will hold it together if centrifugal forces grow stronger."

(China Daily November 16, 2005)