Fire letters and demands: CDU, Greens, churches, SPD and parties demand consequences and negotiations

Another CDU local association from Brandenburg has written an incendiary letter to party leader and Chancellor Friedrich Merz: The CDU Mühlenbecker Land sees their appeal as a wake-up call. “Now is the time for consequences,” says the statement from CDU chairwoman Mühlenbecker Land, Katja Behrendt-Didszun, and eight other members. “We expect that errors will be identified, political decisions will be reviewed and concrete changes will be made instead of further announcements.”

Before the planned exploratory talks for a coalition of the Left, the Greens and the SPD in Berlin, the federal chair of the Green Party, Franziska Brantner, has set conditions. In a conversation with “Spiegel,” Brantner said about a possible state government in Berlin: “Personally, I find it difficult to imagine the Left Party leading the interior or justice departments as long as there are people in the party with connections to organized crime or extremist forces such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP, or Hamas.”

In view of the AfD's recent electoral successes, the legal vice president of the Hanover regional church, Christoph Goos, has reiterated the call for the party to be banned. “The free, democratic basic order has never been as endangered as it is today,” said the constitutional law expert at a specialist conference on Saturday.

“I expect those eligible to apply to take action now,” demanded Goos to applause at the event organized by the Lüneburg Protestant church district. The church itself is not entitled to apply, but it can use its voice in society, he explained. Christians should make it clear what values, framework conditions and rules of the game they stand for.

The SPD believes that the search for a successor to Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier must now be pushed forward. “The state elections are over, now it is time to enter the home stretch in the search for candidates for the office of Federal President,” said SPD parliamentary secretary Dirk Wiese. He sticks to it: “It should be a woman.” She must act prudently “and have good judgment in order to address and resolve conflicts at an early stage,” emphasized Wiese. It should also have “a good standing on the international stage”.

With their positioning against the AfD, the churches are in some ways among the losers in the recent state elections, says theology professor Reiner Anselm, whose hobbyhorse is the relationship between politics and churches. He advises his church to advocate for equalization more in the future. “Protestantism has no party,” he says in an interview. Referring to the AfD's electoral successes, he pleaded for a moderate level of communication with voters: "Not everyone who says they don't want their usual cultural environment to change significantly is a fascist or Nazi. The church must respond more closely to such feelings, which manifest themselves in electoral decisions."

The deputy SPD chairman Alexander Schweitzer is calling for changes to the reform course of Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU). “For Friedrich Merz, reforms mean that growth can only come about through cuts in the welfare state,” Schweitzer told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”. But reforms must be fair and everyone must make their contribution. “Instead, the Chancellor breathes the cold neoliberal spirit of the 1990s.”

Merz was also elected by people who did not necessarily value him personally, but who attributed him economic competence. “And now they notice: He doesn’t deliver,” said the former Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Chancellor is telling people that they don't work enough. Schweitzer also sees reasons for the CDU's crisis in the years of Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Mrs Merkel deliberately avoided political debates and excluded whole sections of society from the political dialogue, which became a non-voter reservoir.” These would come back. “But not to the SPD, CDU, the Greens or the FDP, but to the AfD.”

In the ongoing explorations between the AfD and BSW in Saxony-Anhalt, negotiations are, among other things, about how to deal with Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. This is reported by the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” published in Halle. According to “MZ” research, the two parties want to explore in the coming weeks how their respective goals for the public broadcaster fit together. AfD election winner Ulrich Siegmund has already announced that he wants to quickly terminate the state broadcasting contracts and set up a new broadcasting service.

According to “MZ” research, the BSW is entering into discussions with a less radical proposal. The Wagenknecht party therefore first wants to have it checked whether the MDR can be reformed - according to the ideas of the BSW. One criticism of BSW is that the station has been too close to the government in recent years. If the Wagenknecht party has its way, a new commission could examine whether and to what extent the MDR can be reformed. It remains unclear how the AfD and BSW will agree.

There is fundamental agreement on another topic: both parties are calling for an investigative committee in the state parliament to examine the actions of the authorities during the corona pandemic. There was actually already a government commission with a similar mandate in Saxony-Anhalt - but the AfD still sees the pandemic measures from 2020 as “unjust”. In her 100-day program, she promised during the election campaign to “name the culprits and hold them accountable.” It can therefore be assumed that state employees, civil servants and officials from back then will testify as witnesses in the committee. The BSW also wants a Corona investigation committee, and the new state parliamentary group has already made a decision on this.

The special party conference of the Left Berlin has accepted a proposal from the state executive committee that calls for exploratory talks to be started with the Greens and the SPD. An amendment to the main motion was spontaneously withdrawn. The brief application states: “The Left Berlin invites Alliance 90 / The Greens Berlin and the SPD Berlin to exploratory talks with the aim of examining together whether the political prerequisites for starting coalition negotiations exist.” The election program is the basis for the talks. In a second vote, the delegates voted for substantive conditions for these talks.