Monday 15th November 2021
Because of a series of taboos
Greens start exclusion proceedings against Palmer
The Greens are convinced that the populist outbreaks of Tübingen’s mayor are calculative. After his racist remarks about the footballer Dennis Aogo, the party wants to draw conclusions: It starts a party expulsion process against Boris Palmer.
After half a year of preparation, the state board of the Baden-Württemberg Greens has applied for the party exclusion procedure against the mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer. As the party announced in Stuttgart, the 33-page application was handed over to the district arbitration committee and Palmer’s lawyer, the former Green federal politician Rezzo Schlauch. Hose had recently criticized the party for deliberately delaying the party exclusion process.
At a state party conference in May, the delegates approved a proposal by the state executive to expel Palmer from the party after the politician had made racist comments in a satirical Facebook post about footballer Dennis Aogo. The reason for the exclusion from the party, however, are not isolated cases, explained the Greens country leaders Sandra Detzer and Oliver Hildenbrand. There is a long list of calculated slip-ups and staged taboos. The chairmen mentioned Palmer’s statements on immigration, refugee and human rights policy. During the refugee crisis in 2015, Palmer spoke out in favor of deportations to war zones in Syria and Afghanistan and, if necessary, armed closings of the EU borders.
He had also repeatedly expressed disapproval of the right of adoption for homosexual couples. Even with his statements that the lockdown would protect people who would soon die anyway, “Boris Palmer is far outside the programmatic framework of Alliance 90 / The Greens and probably also outside of the Basic Law,” explained Detzer and Hildenbrand. Palmer has been “for years against the fundamental political values of the party”.
Palmer, Lord Mayor of Tübingen since 2007, is considered one of the most prominent but also most controversial politicians of his party. In 2018, the term “human rights fundamentalism” he had coined was chosen as the bad word of the year 2018. Most recently, the Green City Association of Tübingen decided to organize a member survey before Palmer was nominated again for the mayoral election. When the district arbitration tribunal will decide on the matter is open.