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At least one thing has now been clarified: no one will have to travel to the CDU party conference at the Stuttgart fair, scheduled for December 4. That should suit a large part of the 1001 delegates, as well as the heads of the Esslingen district health department, in whose area the event rooms are located not far from the airport.
General Secretary Paul Ziemiak, who announced the cancellation on Monday afternoon after the CDU committee meetings, was able to boldly refer to the supposedly sophisticated health concept that was developed at Konrad-Adenauer-Haus for the party congress. : such an important event is precisely for them. The Christian Democrats cannot justify themselves in view of the explosion of the crown.
Ziemiak had heard with his own ears how Chancellor Angela Merkel described the situation as “very dynamic” and “dramatic” that morning at the party presidium; in fact, the number of infections he predicted for Christmas a few weeks ago could soon be reached in light of the latest developments. Now the Secretary General says: “We know the responsibility we have.”
This is how the Chancellor’s party is. Anyone who expects people to keep social contacts to a minimum in the next term cannot gather his own people for the party congress.
On the other hand, the CDU has tried unsuccessfully since the spring to elect a new president, which runs the risk of being the former chancellor party after the next federal elections. One is especially afraid of the Greens. And that hasn’t abated after Monday’s decision.
The advantage in the polls is still impressive. But the bourgeois voter does not appreciate the arguments or the uncertainty. But the CDU is under threat from them for weeks and months. “The situation is what it is,” says Secretary General Ziemiak. I could have put it much more drastically.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced her retirement ten months ago, but there will be no election on her successor on December 4. How and when this personality will be decided is still open. At the same time, presidential candidate Friedrich Merz is increasingly directing his anger at the renewed postponement against the current party leadership. That doesn’t bode well for continued competition for the top.
The decision of the federal executive committee stipulates that the governing bodies undertake a reassessment of the situation after the cancellation of the party congress on December 14, according to information from SPIEGEL, the representatives of the Junge Union and the Union of SMEs urged this . Kramp-Karrenbauer’s original recommendation, approved by the Presidium without a vote against, only provided for this reassessment for the board meeting in mid-January. Then it should take place at the latest.
The CDU still clearly favors a face-to-face party conference, a purely digital party conference is just an emergency option, especially since, according to the current legal situation, the election of the president and all new seats on the board should take place in an analogous manner, that is, by mail ballot. In any case, you would have to calculate 70 days for this, says Secretary General Ziemiak. In addition, the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag will try to achieve an amendment to the Basic Law that would also allow elections through digital channels.
From candidate Merz’s perspective, all of this is directed against him. “There are parts of the party establishment that want to prevent me from becoming party chairman and this is now linked to this party congress,” Merz said before Monday’s cancellation decision in the ARD “Morgenmagazin.” The night before, he had discussed how to proceed with his competitors Armin Laschet and Norbert Röttgen and the leader of the Kramp-Karrenbauer party. If it is decided against a digital party conference on December 4, “obviously there are reasons that have little or nothing to do with Corona,” Merz said. Later he commented on the relevant decision of the federal executive committee with the words: “The postponement of the party congress is a decision against the base of the CDU.”
Merz sounds almost like Trump
Me versus the party elite: Merz has been using this narrative for a long time. But Merz has never expressed it so aggressively, almost in the style of Donald Trump, who as a secondary participant in 2016 won the nomination as the US presidential candidate against the Republican establishment. With the difference that Trump really started out as a newcomer to politics and an outsider, while Merz was already the leader of the Union faction and in 2018 Kramp-Karrenbauer was barely beaten in the race for the presidency. He then turned down the offer to be elected to the leadership of the party at the time.
From Merz’s point of view, the situation is this: in general polls, even if they have limited informational value for a delegated party congress, he is clearly ahead of competitors Laschet and Röttgen. That is why you want to make the decision as quickly as possible. For Laschet, vice president of the party and prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, however, it does not have to be so fast; however, the foreign CDU politician Röttgen is not expected to have a chance. The scenario of a consensus candidate Jens Spahn could also become more realistic from the point of view of his followers, the more time passes.
The fact that the party leader Kramp-Karrenbauer said, according to participants in the federal executive committee, that a party presence conference could even take place after Easter further enraged Merz and his supporters. “It’s about stopping it,” says one of them. Because he feels so badly treated by the leadership, the idea of an affiliation decision is now circulating again in the Merz camp, even if an application for this binding instrument was only rejected at the last federal party conference.
When asked about the Merz attacks, Ziemiak says: “We are together as a party.” However, that is a more godly wish. In reality, the CDU will face awkward weeks if candidate Merz now has his showdown and drags his supporters away.
It doesn’t help that Monday’s CDU decisions were viewed with great sympathy by the sister party in Munich. For the CSU it cannot go slow enough with personnel decisions in the Union: the later the CDU clarifies its leadership issue, the sooner the Social Christians plan to decide on the candidate for chancellor as late as possible. Of course, always facing its president, Markus Söder, who, according to the polls, is the absolute favorite as a candidate for chancellor of the Union parties.
If it really becomes Söder, the CDU would in any case be a former chancellor party after the next federal elections.
