Berlin – It was perhaps a historic Bundestag session on Tuesday, but it was certainly not a great moment for Parliament. The special session was called because the flood relief billions must be approved by parliament. Before that, however, there was only one agenda item on the list for days: the agreed debate on the situation in Germany. The topic was broad enough to immediately guess what it was about: Less than three weeks before the election, all parties used the debate for election speeches. The Chancellor too – and that was the real surprise.
Until now she had largely stayed away from the election campaign. Even at the start of the hot phase up to election day, she seemed rather listless. Merkel used the speech in the Tempodrom, where at least the parliamentary group leaders were in a rage, as a balance sheet for her term of office, and then finally made a little detour to the election campaign.
Angela Merkel felt the same way on Tuesday. However, at the end of her speech, she attacked the SPD, which could enter into a red-red-green alliance after the election. The Chancellor gave a red sock speech in Parliament. This seems so wrong in form, content and place that one involuntarily has to think about whether public officials are not obliged to be neutral.
It is clear that the Chancellor, who was CDU chairman for many years, in this capacity of course vehemently advocated her party and was allowed to do so. But in the Bundestag? At the lectern, where she wanted to convince the citizens of the measures in the corona pandemic weeks earlier, her presumably last speech in the Bundestag was about petty election campaign noise. A very pragmatic end to a long era in which she was above all the crisis manager who subordinated much to the purpose rather than the content. Still, it will have been depressing for them too.
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