In Mainz, the state parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate elected SPD politician Alexander Schweitzer as the new Prime Minister. Former Prime Minister Marie-Luise Dreyer recently announced her resignation.
Outgoing Prime Minister Malu Dreyer and her successor Alexander Schweitzer (both SPD) hug each other at the start of the special session of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, Mainz, July 10, 2024
picture alliance/dpa | Arne Dedert
Marie-Luise Dreyer, who has MS, said she didn’t have enough in the office. She was in office for eleven years and recently drew significant criticism for her dramatic misconduct in the Ahr Valley flood disaster. She lost significant support with her SPD.
Malu Dreyer, who is also the chairman of the board of directors of the ZDF, had almost sold Hunsrück airport to Chinese impostors. Missteps in major infrastructure decisions are part of the SPD genetics in Rhineland-Palatinate, as already seen by predecessor Kurt Beck. His finance minister was even sentenced to prison after scandals involving the Nürburgring race track; Beck later had to resign.
The new head of government was previously Minister of Labour, Social Affairs, Transformation and Digitalization in the Rhineland-Palatinate, according to the job description. According to the association Bitkom, Rhineland-Palatinate ranks poorly in 13th place in terms of the expansion of the fiber optic network compared to other countries, companies only get below-average fast internet. A lot of money was wasted only on the topic of political propaganda “charging stations for electric cars”, where, according to Bitkom, it is doing above average in the country. Of all the federal states, the country has the most forests destroyed by wind turbines. Also SPD/Green representation.
Schweitzer believed in the need for mandatory vaccination during the Corona crisis and announced that Rhineland-Palatinate was one of the first federal states to compulsorily investigate the vaccination status of employees and residents in on-site facilities.
Nationwide, Rhineland-Palatinate, with its vaccination rate of more than 92 percent, is in the top group of all federal states, the report said. Socialist Minister Alexander Schweitzer had previously indicated that 69 percent of these had been reinforced. He rejected criticism as a disinformation campaign by anti-vaccination groups. Their new state regulation also required monitoring the vaccination status of employees and residents for these facilities. The facilities had to report the number of employees once a week, of residents and the percentage of those vaccinated. This also included booster vaccinations.
Schweitzer is expected to take over the executive chairmanship of ZDF’s board of directors again, as Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Ministers usually do; The Mainz broadcaster’s committees are always clearly influenced by state politics. This will be interesting after the 2026 elections, when the CDU may take over the country again. The leader of the CDU parliamentary group, Gordon Schnieder, criticized director Himmler after a nasty Nazi comparison made by ZDF man Böhmermanns. Böhmermann has been eating chalk lately.
Schweitzer now wants to be active on TikTok. And he wants to go to Glen Ahr. The anniversary is on the 14/15. July the flood disaster, there will be a memorial meeting. He wants to make sure residents get help three years after the flood. So far, hardly any help has come, not to mention that the construction of destroyed bridges has begun.
The state parliament’s investigative committee met for the last time in Mainz on Thursday (11 July) to discuss the final report internally. It will be published in September and is likely to describe what happened during the flood as well as the political responsibilities. Dreyer will no longer be in office there.
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