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Reiner Haseloff prevented for the first time the rupture of his government in Saxony-Anhalt. But now the CDU, the SPD and the Greens are furious, and that has been going on for a long time in Berlin too.
It is just before 11 a.m. that the great 86-cent dispute in Saxony-Anhalt will end with a powerful word that is actually a personal defeat. CDU Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff cannot convince his own party friends in the state parliament to vote in favor of increasing the radio license fee. So just remove the bill entirely.
Haseloff thus defused the government crisis in Saxony-Anhalt in the first place. But that’s it. The radio license dispute continues and will likely end in the Federal Constitutional Court. And in the CDU, the dispute over the question of how much AfD differentiation is necessary and possible is not going to go away. It will be inherited by a new president, be it Armin Laschet, Friedrich Merz or Norbert Röttgen. The SPD and the Greens are happy, at least until things get serious.
It’s complicated
In Saxony-Anhalt, the government made up of the CDU, the SPD and the Greens had been arguing for days about whether they would agree to the increase in the radio license fee, as did the other 15 state governments. The SPD and the Greens are in favor, while the CDU parliamentary group is quite closed against them. Like the AfD.
The dispute escalated so much that the SPD and the Greens in the country even threatened to break the coalition should the CDU and AfD stop the contract with their joint majority. Because Interior Minister and CDU regional head Holger Stahlknecht could openly gain something from this path, Haseloff fired him on Friday. The prime minister himself does not consider himself the biggest supporter of the increase, but he did not want the AfD either. It’s complicated.
The Greens in particular, but also the SPD, then attached the utmost importance to the dispute in national politics. The head of the Greens, Robert Habeck, personally intervened in the debate several times. Monday saw a dispute in the Saxony-Anhalt case over the “understanding of freedom of the press and freedom of speech and freedom of language in Germany.”
It can hardly be bigger.
At the same time, the Greens and the SPD repeatedly declared the attitude of the Christian Democrats in the state to an examination of how serious the CDU is in general with the demarcation of the AfD. Of course, this suits both parties in the impending federal election campaign.
That they need not be wrong on the matter is demonstrated by the fact that the new CDU Bundestag, Armin Laschet, has declared the case to be a question of identity for his party. “There are times when a clear stance is required,” he said on Friday. The AfD “could never be a political partner.”
Dispute about the course at the CDU
Friedrich Merz sees it completely differently. Which shows that the CDU is actually fighting for the course. The former leader of the Union parliamentary group, who is also running for the party’s presidency, had indicated that he could understand the position of the CDU parliamentary group in Magdeburg.
There is growing concern in the party that camps within the CDU may diverge more and more. If Laschet and Merz already have such different views on this issue, how should the CDU unite after the election of the new president in mid-January? It is fermenting in the Union, the dispute is currently overshadowing the race for the presidency.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, still head of the CDU, told t-online on Tuesday that it was good “that the coalition in Saxony-Anhalt has found a solution and can now focus on fighting the pandemic.” At the same time, he criticized the attitude of the parliamentary group.
Some already see the carefully forged alliances tremble. Many in the party see the fact that the Greens and the SPD are so critical of the CDU as insolence. Someone from the executive of the parliamentary group told t-online: “The Greens and the SPD have signed the coalition agreement on the stability of contributions in Magdeburg, now they are deciding, they want to break their word, and we are the bad guys because the AfD is also against it. Not being entirely true. ”
Now they are fighting with tougher bandages, some see the electoral campaign already opened by the attacks. Union representatives are only divided on the answer: Support the Sachsen-Anhaltiner and promote the escalation of the conflict with the SPD and the Greens in public? Or turn around and walk away from your own position? Many like to point out that the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt has been against too much money for public broadcasting for ten years; at that time, the AfD didn’t even exist.
“In the end the worry remains”
The dispute in the CDU is initially an advantage for the SPD and the Greens. Both parties have already tried to present themselves as closed and orderly political forces, unlike the CDU.
And so, after Haseloff’s withdrawal, the disastrous state of the CDU is emphasized. The vice chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, Dirk Wiese, speaks of a “leadership vacuum in the federal CDU”. “It is questionable whether the lack of authority will change with a new CDU president, especially if he is only elected with a narrow result,” Wiese told t-online. In an interview with t-online, Green Parliamentary Leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt also called it “extremely alarming” that “the federal CDU is not showing leadership here.”
SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans even explicitly warned against similar cases in the future. “Ultimately, the concern remains that the next case where the CDU cedes to the AfD will not be long in coming,” he told t-online.
A convenient strategy
They are harsh accusations. And almost automatically they raise the question of whether you can still govern with such a CDU in the federal government. I want. After all, the SPD and the Greens claim that they will never allow doubts to arise in the fight against the right. For the SPD, this question arises sharply in the grand coalition, for the Greens with some probability after the general elections next year.
And if you ask about the SPD and the Greens, you notice that behind closed doors there is a credible assurance that the problem of the CDU with its leadership and the demarcation to the right in the countries is considered very serious. But at the same time it is emphasized over and over again that there is really no doubt about the clear position of the members of the CDU parliamentary group.
In a sense: on the Bund hui, in the east sometimes ugh
That might not be entirely wrong, but it’s pretty convenient for the SPD and Greens too. Because if you follow the argument, only the CDU currently has a problem in the federal government, and especially in terms of its external image: chaos and lack of leadership. If the SPD and the Greens seriously questioned the CDU as partners, the problem would soon become them too. They would simply lose a realistic perspective on power.
And the situation, obviously, is not so dire for them after all. Or as a deputy from the CDU of Saxony put it: “The position of the Greens and the SPD is like a song that you record to be better known. But whether they will really make it to the charts is still completely open.”
