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Saturday 28 November 2020
The SPD of the federal capital has a new leadership duo made up of Franziska Giffey and Raed Saleh. The family minister also makes it clear that she wants to be the top candidate in the elections to the House of Representatives next year.
About ten months before the election to the House of Representatives, the Berlin SPD has two new presidents. Federal Minister of the Family Franziska Giffey and the leader of the parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, Raed Saleh, are supposed to pull the party out of a low vote and lead it to a new force. After Friday night’s elections, the SPD announced the election results at an online party convention: Giffey received about 89 percent of valid votes, Saleh about 69 percent.
Giffey then announced that she wants to run as the SPD’s top candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives elections in 2021. “I want to tell you too, if you want, then I’m ready to be your top candidate for next year,” she said.
The party’s former leader, Michael Müller, who is also the ruling mayor of a red-red-green alliance, did not appear again. He is running for the Bundestag next year. The leadership of the Berlin SPD had already agreed to the change at the top of the party at the beginning of the year. The background for this is the poor results of the SPD polls, according to which it has long ceased to be the strongest party in the capital. However, due to the pandemic, the SPD had to postpone the new elections from May to October 31 and then to November.
Doctoral thesis subject
Giffey, who was mayor of the multicultural district of Neukölln in Berlin until she moved to the Federal Cabinet, is considered a beacon of hope for the Berlin SPD. He wanted to “tackle” in his new role, he promised in a speech Friday night at the party congress. Giffey wants to make security in the capital one of the focal points of his future work. “Anyone who lives in Berlin should be able to feel safe. And that means social security, but it also clearly means internal security,” Giffey said Friday night. “I want us to take care of that because I know it is a concern for many, many people in this city.”
However, politics is currently highlighting the issue of possible plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. The Free University of Berlin (FU) issued a reprimand in the fall of 2019 for shortcomings at work, but did not withdraw his PhD. After widespread criticism of this approach, the UF recently announced a new examination that should be completed at the end of the winter semester conference period, that is, at the end of February. Giffey’s complaint was withdrawn. Under pressure, Giffey recently announced that he would be giving up his Ph.D.
In view of the corona pandemic, the Berlin SPD is holding its party congress, which started on Friday and continued on Saturday, mainly online. This applies to debates, speeches and substantive decisions. In the case of ballots (throughout the day the entire meeting must be redefined), delegates go to the district offices of the SPD to cast their ballots in a ballot box. The online match conference must be interrupted twice for this purpose.
