Thursday November 11, 2021
First speech in the Bundestag since election
Whoever orders Scholz gets Scholz
From Volker Petersen
The possible new Chancellor Scholz speaks for the first time since the election in the Bundestag. It is also the Union’s first major appearance as a likely opposition party. There is still room for improvement for both of them.
Olaf Scholz is not a rousing speaker, as was known in the Bundestag before that morning. This has also been confirmed again with his first appearance there since the federal election. It was about the new Corona law, which should replace the “epidemic situation of national scope”. The contents have long been known and therefore also that, although more tested, the important question of vaccinations remains voluntary. The compulsory vaccination for nurses will not come for the time being, the SPD, Greens and FDP have already made this clear.
With that, however, a bit of that optimistic mood that the probable coalitionists had so convincingly spread before has vanished. And that leads to a certain disappointment in the Scholz speech. The fact that Scholz found something “very, very important” was the highest level of passion that the man who wants to become the next Federal Chancellor displayed. Of course, you shouldn’t be surprised. Because in the past few years all those interested have had ample opportunity to familiarize themselves with Scholz’s temperament. “Whoever orders leadership, gets leadership,” he once said about his style of government as Mayor of Hamburg. And today the rule is: if you order Scholz, you get Scholz.
It is the formula for success that brought him to where he is now – on the threshold of the Chancellery. He succeeded by leaning stylistically on the incumbent. The “Merkel bonus” gave him the decisive impetus after the weaker performance of his competition. This also includes not appearing inspired, but always emphasized factual. So he said what many are now saying: that more needs to be boosted, that people in old people’s and nursing homes need to be protected, that it is now “right and important” to test more.
It was clear that it was not the executive finance minister of the old government who spoke here, but the possible head of a new government. Scholz also radiated that and so it was also reflected in the requests to speak from the other speakers. For example from FDP MP Bettina Stark-Watzinger, who said that “we will soon form a government”, or Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus, who promised to make “constructive opposition”.
Union pushes up the volume control
He gave a foretaste of what it might look like. Surprisingly, Brinkhaus and CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt rushed to the plans of the SPD, Greens and FDP. Above all, they warned of the signaling effect if the “epidemic situation” was allowed to run out. You may be right that this could cause confusion in parts of the population – because the country could still face the greatest hardship – but on the whole they didn’t have that much to criticize. What should apparently be drowned out with volume. Brinkhaus criticized the fact that the countries were now deprived of options for action, which is likely to have referred to lockdowns, curfews and contact restrictions that will no longer be possible in the future. However, the CDU had promised as full-bodied as the other parties that it should no longer exist.
Especially since the criticism of the end of the emergency seemed a bit inconsistent. The Union parliamentary group leader did not say a word about the fact that in Jens Spahn it was precisely the CDU health minister who had demanded exactly that. And not, as the Green Katrin Göring-Eckardt had justified with a lack of legal certainty. But with the fact that so many people in the country have already been vaccinated. FDP man Marco Buschmann was not wrong when he said that when the Union’s index finger was outstretched, three fingers pointed back at the party.
A Merkelian dröger Scholz, a somewhat shrill union in the opposition – this is how one could sum up the Bundestag premieres before the formation of the government. It is probably quite normal for the future head of government to appear in support of the state and for the opposition to push the volume control up. It is more important these days that the resolutions actually help against the delta variant. Politicians will really be measured by this.