CDU and Free Voters reject investigation into threatening letter from Heike Raab

2024-01-11 13:03:38

The Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament will not set up a committee of inquiry into the background to a complaint letter from the State Chancellery to Südwestrundfunk (SWR) that was seen as an attempt at intimidation. The CDU and Free Voters factions announced that they had decided against it. “There are more important problems to solve than proving what is obvious,” said the leader of the Free Voters, Joachim Streit. Both factions repeated their demand that Media State Secretary Heike Raab (SPD) must resign or be removed because she is no longer acceptable in her position.

In the December plenary session, the state parliament had already rejected a request from the AfD to set up a committee of inquiry. However, the other two opposition factions remained open to submitting their own motion to parliament.

Raab was under pressure for weeks at the end of 2023 after a complaint she had written on the State Chancellery’s stationery became public. The FAZ published the sharply worded threatening letter.

In it, Raab accused the SWR that the correspondent Georg Link had made “false factual claims” about her party colleague Roger Lewentz. Link was surprised that Lewentz, who resigned as Interior Minister because of the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley, wanted to remain chairman of the state SPD. Raab’s letter to the SWR was written under the letterhead of the State Chancellery, a copy of which was sent to Roger Lewentz. He in turn attacked SWR editor Link sharply and threateningly at the state press conference.

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The SWR rejected Raab’s criticism. Raab stated in the state parliament that she had written the letter on her own initiative and that Prime Minister Malu Dreyer knew nothing about it. Sending the letter as happened was a mistake, said Raab. She has since resigned from her positions on the SWR supervisory bodies.