after suspected corruption
Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor Feldmann voted out
11/06/2022, 7:48 p.m
For ten years, Peter Feldmann has been at the head of Germany’s fifth largest city. But now Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor is sitting in the dock and making headlines with slip-ups. In a referendum, he is now voted out with an overwhelming majority.
According to the first preliminary results, the controversial mayor of Frankfurt am Main, Peter Feldmann (SPD), has been voted out. After counting around 86 percent of the votes in the referendum, around 95 percent voted against the 64-year-old remaining in office, said the electoral authority of the Main metropolis. In addition, the required quorum of at least 30 percent of eligible voters who had to vote to be voted out was reached.
The 64-year-old has been criticized for months for his alleged role in the affair about excessive salaries at Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO). Since October, he has had to answer in a lawsuit before the regional court on charges of accepting an advantage.
Feldmann’s former partner and later wife is said to have received too much money and a company car as the head of a German-Turkish daycare center. The indictment accuses the 64-year-old that this employment relationship was closed from 2014 due to his position as mayor. In the 2018 election campaign, the Frankfurt AWO is said to have supported Feldmann by raising donations. In the summer, he was voted out by the city council with a large majority. He allowed a one-week deadline to accept this decision and prevent the referendum to pass.
He also gambled away sympathies, for example when he knocked out a sexist slogan at the expense of the stewardesses on an airplane and snatched the Frankfurt Eintracht European Cup in the Römer. The Eintracht leadership then declared him an undesirable person in the stadium. And recently he caused criticism in the court again: In a statement read by his lawyer, it was said that he had married his wife because of an unwanted pregnancy. He later apologized to his daughter for the passage about his view at the time that the child should be aborted better.