FDP General Secretary Buschmann
The term “D-Day” could have been used in party circles
11.12.2024Reading time: 2 min.
FDP leader Lindner just called the “D-Day” paper on the traffic lights off an “intern’s paper”. Now his new general secretary admits: The term could well have been used in internal FDP circles.
The FDP’s communication chaos in the “D-Day” affair is now enriched by another episode: Now the General Secretary of the Liberals admitted in an interview that the term “D-Day” could well have been used in internal discussions. Buschmann told the newspapers of the Funke media group: “I can’t put my hand in the fire for the fact that someone hasn’t thrown such a term into the room at some point in the last few months.” However, other politicians would also use such metaphors.
“Think of Olaf Scholz’s bazooka, a rocket launcher. Or take a look at Angela Merkel’s biography: There she speaks of an open battle between the CDU/CSU and the Schröder government. There would have to be “human Standards” must be applied “when an employee uses these terms in his personal records,” demanded Buschmann.
The Secretary General said he saw the so-called D-Day paper “for the first time when the FDP itself published it.” Federal Managing Director Carsten Reymann, who has since resigned, assured him that he had prepared the paper “for himself as a list of tasks in case of emergency.” It was not presented in any political decision-making round in which he took part. “We talked about scenarios, but none of them were called D-Day.”
Buschmann opposed speculation that FDP leader Christian Lindner had commissioned the paper to break the coalition. “It is true that there was a willingness in the FDP leadership to end the coalition if there was no better policy for our country.” The federal office has also prepared for this.
Lindner gives its managers a lot of freedom to make decisions, emphasized Buschmann. As Federal Managing Director, he “would never have dared to present such a half-baked, half-finished product to a Federal Chairman as this internal working paper, which is now being talked about so much.”
When asked whether there was no alternative to Lindner at the party leadership, Buschmann replied: “No person is irreplaceable, but: Christian Lindner is a very strong chairman with a high level of internal integration.”
Buschmann also defended himself against the accusation of blowing up the traffic light. With Christian Lindner, Chancellor Olaf Scholz “sacked the chairman of a coalition party and thus ended the coalition. So if anyone blew up the traffic lights, it was him,” said Buschmann in reference to Scholz.