German Christian Democrats fear that a case has erupted around the CDU / Christian Social Union representative that the money raised in the purchase of masks in the spring will be inflated to a level comparable to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s party financing scandal. The CDU was once almost overwhelmed.
It’s a circumstance that voters will severely punish Angela Merkel’s conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, in the March 14th district elections because one of their MPs discovered that in the spring of 2020, her company received hundreds of thousands of euros in kickbacks for her participation in making the inferiority mask – Writes In the Financial Times article dealing with the consequences of the case. Voters go to the polls in the counties of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, and lead the Green Party and Social Democratic Party in the second.
It is something that could do long-term damage to the CDU, Olaf Gauting, a member of parliament for the party, said. This is mainly because he was loaded into a series of previous suspicious cases.This is evidenced by a political thrust from the Christian Democratic Union in Baden-Württemberg saying that voters are asking why politicians do not deal with their good salaries, and why they should make money even with confusing deals in the background. The scandal also includes a representative of the CDU’s sister party, the CSU Bavarian affectedThe party leadership forced both of them to leave political life for a short trip.
Just enchant
The issue of the mask is like spraying onto a wound, says Jürgen Walter, professor of political science at the University of Mainz. Voters have blamed CDU in recent months for slowing the vaccination process and breaking promises of mass testing. Therefore, the party’s perception was receding, and it is now even sharper.
The failures expected on Sunday are particularly bad for the new head of the CDU, Armin Laschet, who was elected in January and has to compete to be an advisor to the CDU / CSU party alliance. Turning things wrong can undermine power within a party, and supporters can hold back. It is no coincidence that the leading politicians of the CDU have rapidly switched to mitigation mode, promising, among other things, that they will investigate whether their other colleagues have benefited from the purchases linked to the epidemic.
Naturally, the opposition seized the opportunity to deal one blow at a struggling opponent. According to Annalena Baerbock, co-chair of the Green Party, the case illustrates that the CDU / CSU is struggling with a structural and systemic problem of alienation. Marco Buschmann, the leading politician of the Liberal Democratic Party, thinks the CDU can act like the Italian Christian Democrats, which turns out to be sitting in the middle of a corruption web like a spider. After that, the voters led her to a warmer climate.
There is a problem with the government
The CDU has two ministries in government, health care and the economy, that people increasingly blame for their problems. The first is blamed for slowing the vaccination campaign, while the second is blamed for delaying the payment of subsidies to companies. Above all, the party’s particular concern is the weakening of Angela Merkel. in September Parliamentary elections Since then, the outgoing chancellor has decided with the provincial leaders on the necessary crisis management measures due to the epidemic, but this cooperation is getting increasingly difficult. It’s just a lame duck, and it’s clearly losing its influence, says Professor Walter of Merkel.
And this is not all. The prosecution is investigating the case of Representative Axel Fischer of the Christian Democratic Union, accused of accepting funds from Azerbaijani sources in support of pro-Azeri proposals. Fisher denies the accusation. Another Conservative MP, Philip Amthur, has been targeted to lobby the US tech company Augustus Intelligence. He initially denied receiving money for it, and later admitted that he received stock options from the company.
Cited MP from the CDU, Olaf Gotting is reminded of this string of scandals. His party went through the worst crisis in its history when Chancellor Helmut Kohl admitted accepting illegal party subsidies during his tenure in the 1990s. This situation has almost completely destroyed the CDU, and if the embarrassing news of party politicians continues to emerge one after the other, the party may find itself in an existential crisis like the one that occurred at the time.
