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By 9:08 am on Thursday morning at the latest, it will be clear that this will not be an ordinary debate. Angela Merkel has already spoken for a good four minutes, but is repeatedly interrupted by boos, especially from the ranks of the AfD parliamentary group, at the far right of the room.
We are familiar with him now, including the Chancellor of course, but he is louder and more vocal than usual. Merkel looks irritated. “Listen to me,” someone yells.
Then the President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble, spoke from his elevated seat behind the lectern. “Our country, like the whole world and especially Europe, is in an extraordinarily difficult situation,” says the CDU politician. When Schäuble wanted to explain the constitutional function of the government statement, which Merkel is currently considering the situation of the crown, there are more interjections from the extreme right. “Wait a minute, if you interrupt the president, you will get calls to order, that’s dangerous,” he says.
The fact that the opposition criticizes the government and the factions that support it, sometimes with violence, is part of daily political life in the Bundestag. But there’s more than that. Is the freedom of citizens disproportionately restricted while the role of parliaments is undermined? These questions are in the room, formulated more or less drastically. And for once, everyone agrees, Corona is about so much more: life or death.
On this day, Angela Merkel demonstratively sits in her seat on the government bench with mouth and nose protection, which is only removed and then put back on for her speech. The Chancellor has recently been using FFP2 masks, they are supposed to protect better than the simpler versions. Representatives of the government factions also wear them in plenary, the leader of the CSU state group Alexander Dobrindt even forgets to remove them at the beginning of his speech. There is also a lot going on about symbolism these days.
Merkel defends the resolutions
In any case, the Chancellor believes that the previous day’s agreements are “adequate, necessary and proportionate.” CDU policy will say it three times in the course of his speech. Merkel first describes the pandemic dynamics of the last weeks to justify the measures that will be applied from November 2. She understands “the frustration, the despair,” says the chancellor, especially with those who are now being hit especially hard, although they have behaved in an exemplary manner in recent months.
But that’s Merkel’s message: it doesn’t help.
Corona is putting the country before a medical, economic, social, political and psychological test, which can only be faced “with solidarity and with the desire for a transparent and open exchange.” Merkel did not offer much comfort to citizens in her speech. “Winter is going to be tough,” he says. Four long difficult months. “But it will end.”
In general, this is the line that the other speakers from the CDU, CSU and SPD ranks will also take. The leader of the Union parliamentary group, Ralph Brinkhaus, is particularly fierce when he slams the lectern with one hand so insistently as if he wanted to check its quality. Brinkhaus also has two tasks to fulfill this morning: defending the new resolutions and, at the same time, defending himself and his parliamentary group from the accusation that he is seeing the increasing overthrow of parliament.
As always, attack is the best defense, so the CDU politician first denounces the leader of the FDP parliamentary group, Christian Lindner, of an “unworthy” appearance, “His predecessors would have been ashamed of it.” Lindner had previously accused the federal government of “actionism” because of its crown policy. However, above all, the FDP politician demands more involvement of parliament in the fight against the virus.
Lindner wants more voice for the Bundestag
His accusation, which all the opposition spokesmen and indirectly the very leader of the SPD parliamentary group, Rolf Mützenich, is: Crown politics has shifted too much to the executive and, above all, to the round of prime ministers with the chancellor, what is not provided for in the Basic Law.
Certainly, therefore, it is not yet a “revocation dictatorship”, as claimed by the leader of the AfD parliamentary group, Alexander Gauland. The Chancellor refers to such statements when she says: “Lies and misinformation, conspiracies and hatred not only damage the democratic debate, but also the fight against the virus.” Merkel knows, however, that there is also growing discontent in the Union faction because it is very little involved in decisions, sometimes powerful. The leader of his parliamentary group Brinkhaus, who now rejects the corresponding accusations, had publicly complained about this months ago.
And, of course, Merkel knows the executive’s appeal in the face of the sudden rise in power. Meet one or another prime minister or federal minister whose popularity ratings have risen sharply in the recent past. The Chancellor was not that popular for long, either.
But what if it’s a matter of life and death? That is exactly the issue on which everything revolves around the Bundestag this morning. The only difference is that there is no agreement on the answers. What is proportionate, what is excessive, what is right, what is wrong.
And that shouldn’t change anytime soon.
