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SUBWAYichael Müller did it again. In the race for the SPD candidacy for the Bundestag in the Berlin constituency of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, the ruling mayor prevailed. And against his own secretary of state: Sawsan Chebli. Müller, 55, a Berlin SPD veteran, received 58.4 percent of the vote in a member poll, Chebli 40.2 percent. 1.4 percent abstained.
Chebli’s candidate for a fight caused a stir when the 42-year-old political officer took on her own boss. For Müller, the success against Chebli is particularly important: because on Saturday he will step down as state chairman of the Berlin SPD, resigning from a post that accompanied him with the interruption for 12 years. A defeat against Chebli would have thrown him and probably the entire Berlin SPD into a crisis. Following Müller’s resignation as party leader, Federal Minister for the Family Franziska Giffey and the leader of the Berlin SPD parliamentary group Raed Saleh, a longtime rival of Müller, will take over the leadership of the Berlin party on Saturday. Giffey is supposed to lead the distraught Berlin SPD to the top of the parties in the capital during next year’s election campaign. Müller, for his part, wants to continue his political career in the Bundestag.
Chebli’s candidacy threatened to thwart this bill. The secretary of state drew on her own biography: she was born in West Berlin as the twelfth of thirteen children in a Palestinian family. His parents were stateless for two decades, the family was only tolerated in Germany, he lived in Hartz IV. The father was deported to Lebanon three times, but returned. Chebli, who is a political scientist, uses her resume as an example of a rising story that is well received in the SPD. His result against the ruling mayor is better than many in the Berlin SPD expected.
Broken relationship
Even Müller, who was trained in a small metallurgical company and worked as a book printer after finishing high school, can show a story of progress. But he, who is considered a serious specialist politician, but also a great procrastinator, has not commercialized them even close to being comparable. On the recommendation of the former foreign minister and current federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the ruling mayor had appointed Chebli’s secretary of state; Before that, at Steinmeier’s urging, she had become a deputy spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The relationship between Müller and Chebli was soon destroyed, as Chebli did not play on the team, but was in charge of his own marketing, according to his internal match opponents. They accused Chebli of relying primarily on self-profiling, but of having accomplished little as Secretary of State for civic engagement and international affairs. He also acted chaotically in the administration and treated employees “like garbage,” former colleagues told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Chebli denies it.
His supporters, however, believed that Chebli could win new supporters for the SPD in Berlin with issues such as anti-racism and feminism, which is only 16 percent in the capital. While some of the Berlin Social Democrats accused Chebli of ingratitude towards Müller, who took her to the Senate Chancellery and promoted her, others saw her move as courageous. According to Chebli supporters, Müller has mostly political claims to take care of that are no longer in line with the times.
Müller had moved to the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf constituency with his Bundestag candidacy, as SPD Vice President and Juso boss Kevin Kühnert is running in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district where he lives. Kühnert had already obtained the majorities there for his candidacy to the Bundestag. Chebli, on the other hand, lives in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf on Kurfürstendamm, but officially announced his candidacy only after Müller’s. 1,456 of the approximately 2,500 members of the district association participated in the twelve-day survey. More than half of the SPD members in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf are over 60 years old, the district association is considered bourgeois-conservative. The vote of the members is not formally binding for an electoral conference in November, which officially determines the candidate, but has so far been followed without exception.
