Saxony-Anhalt: the interview that cost Stahlknecht his job

Stand: 5:00 pm | Reading time: 4 minutes

SAxis-Anhalt Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff removed Interior Minister Holger Stahlknecht (both CDUs). He thus drew the consequences of a shaky interview on the coalition’s dispute over the radio license fee and the announcement of a minority government of the CDU, as announced on Friday by the State Chancellery.

Stahlknecht had categorically excluded his faction from compromising. “That is not negotiable. The CDU will not vacate its position, “said the 56-year-old from the” Magdeburger Volksstimme. ” The party is “without buts” on the side of the parliamentary group. “We form ranks.”

The CDU parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt is, like the AfD, against an increase in the transmission rate. Stahlknecht explained in the interview that the parliamentary group should not be dissuaded from a conviction “that the AfD now also says that it has the same opinion as us in one place or another.” The CDU should not “say goodbye to its position just because others distance themselves from the CDU for tactical reasons.”

Looking at the coalition partners, he said: “We remain in our position. The ball is now in the court of the SPD and the Greens. I assume that both are aware of their political responsibility and will not end the coalition of their own free will. “

Prime Minister Haseloff justified the dismissal by saying that Stahlknecht had “publicly raised the possibility of a coalition breakdown and the possibility of a majority government consisting solely of the CDU.” The Prime Minister continues to pursue the goal of leading the “government capable of action”. The relationship of trust with Stahlknecht was “seriously disturbed”.

Stahlknecht had long been traded as Haseloff’s possible successor. After several mishaps and scandals in his ministry and at the CDU, Stahlknecht Haseloff had given way to the top candidate.

Greens: do not deactivate the broadcast dispute

Meanwhile, the Green parliamentary group in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament welcomed Stahlknecht’s removal from office. “I think the decision is appropriate and appropriate,” said parliamentary group leader Cornelia Lüddemann of the German press agency. “Mr Stahlknecht announced a regicide on the open stage and prepared a minority government with the help of the AfD,” Lüddemann said.

However, Lüddemann does not see the dispute over the radio transmissions disabled by the staff. After all, Stahlknecht is also the president of the CDU and his positions are widespread in the party. Therefore, the vote on the State Broadcasting Treaty scheduled for mid-December is also “a vote on the coalition.”

The leader of the left-wing parliamentary group, Dietmar Bartsch, called Haseloff’s removal from the Interior Minister a “smear comedy.” “The CDU Saxony-Anhalt is a troop in ruins and belongs to the opposition as soon as possible,” Bartsch told the German publishing network (RND).

Kenya has become Afghanistan, Bartsch said, referring to the colors of the Kenyan and Afghan flags and the colors of the coalition party in Saxony-Anhalt made up of the CDU, the SPD and the Greens. “The federal CDU leadership vacuum is strikingly visible here,” Bartsch said.

The background to the television dispute in Saxony-Anhalt, which threatens the existence of the government’s black-red-green alliance in Magdeburg, is the announcement by the parliamentary group CDU that it will vote against the new state treaty amending the media. The core of this is the increase in public service broadcasting rates on January 1 by 86 cents per month to 18.36 euros.

Stahlknecht had justified his party’s refusal to a higher radio rate, among other things with criticism of reports from public broadcasters. Among other things, they did not describe “the process of transformation in the eastern states of Germany” and the disorders associated with it. “Public broadcasters from time to time do not report on an equal footing, but with the index finger raised from moralizing.”

He observed “a moralization prescribed by an intellectual minority” that is completely different from what determines people’s everyday lives, Stahlknecht said. He related this, among other things, to gender. “Nobody talks about gender language every day. And nobody wonders every day if what they say is always so politically correct. You should not create the impression that people have the feeling that they are no longer allowed to speak their minds. “