“Hard but fair” to Brandenburg
Amthor wants to talk to the dissatisfied
By Marko Schlichting
24.09.2024, 05:18 a.m.
After the state elections in Brandenburg, the guests on “Hart aber fair” talk about the sensitivities of the citizens in the state. One politician then announces his visit to the province. And two others would come along. Together with a TV team.
Things get interesting when the butcher’s saleswoman Doreen Lorsch arrives. It takes about 20 minutes. Before that, presenter Louis Klamroth shows a short film that he shot in the small town where Doreen Lorsch lives: Dahme/Mark. There isn’t much going on there. Dahme is a typical East German provincial town. It is located in the Teltow-Fläming district, Cottbus is not far away. The Dahme River flows through the small town, all the way to Berlin-Köpenick. There it flows into the Spree. The capital is not far. It’s a good hour and a half drive by car. But in Dahme you can’t tell that the capital is somewhere around there. The town seems a little dreary, the streets are deserted. They are afraid in Dahme, afraid for their future. “Something has to change,” says Doreen Lorsch. “You feel somehow forgotten.”
The people in Dahme want to let off steam. That’s why they’re demonstrating. But nobody seems to be interested in them and their problems. There are the pensioners who get so little money that they search garbage containers for returnable bottles. It’s called dumpster diving. They’re afraid of being left behind. It’s the foreigners’ fault. Not all of them, but those who don’t work. Doreen Lorsch says that politicians haven’t paid enough attention to people’s problems. “That made people angry.” She tells of a village near Dahme. “We had a butcher, a baker, a Konsum, a bank, a flower shop. They’ve all closed down. And you feel left alone.” The people in her area aren’t really doing badly. “But you’re afraid of where things are going and that we might be forgotten at some point,” says Doreen Lorsch.
Woidke on the search
On Sunday, a new state parliament was elected in Brandenburg. The SPD narrowly won, with the AfD coming in second. But it will not be part of the government, as in Thuringia and Saxony. Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke needs one or more coalition partners to govern. He could try to form a minority government with the CDU. The Christian Democrats rejected this. Now he only has one possible coalition partner: the BSW. But that comes with conditions. BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht is one of the guests on “Hart aber fair”. She demands that a state government must influence the federal government to end the war in Ukraine. The state government should also speak out against the stationing of American medium-range weapons.
Towards the end of the broadcast, there is a brief argument about this between Wagenknecht, the SPD general secretary Kevin Kühnert and the CDU politician Philipp Amthor. The federal government is responsible for foreign policy, explains Amthor. But there is a foreign affairs committee in the Bundesrat and its tasks are laid down in the constitution, replies Wagenknecht. They are not, says Amthor. It states that the federal government is responsible for foreign policy.
The lawyer obviously missed his studies. Article 32 of the constitution regulates foreign policy. It initially states that it is the responsibility of the federal government. But the article then goes on to say: “Before concluding a treaty that affects the special circumstances of a country, the country must be consulted in good time,” it says. In addition, the article in the Basic Law allows federal states to conclude treaties with foreign states under certain circumstances, but with the consent of the federal government. And: The “Committee on Foreign Affairs” of the Federal Council has similar tasks to the Foreign Office, i.e. it deals with “maintaining relations with foreign states,” as it is called in technical jargon. However, the federal states cannot prohibit the sale of weapons to Ukraine. At most, they can make corresponding appeals to the federal government.
The coalition negotiations in Brandenburg will certainly be difficult. Wagenknecht has one more demand. Doreen Lorsch will be receptive to this: “We have a mandate from the voters,” says Wagenknecht. “But the mandate is not to continue as before. That is not what people voted for. They voted for change. And that will be the decisive factor in the talks now: Is Dietmar Woidke prepared to change his policy on the issue of peace, but also on the issues of internal security, education, and other issues such as dealing with Corona, and to pursue a policy where people feel supported? This of course also applies to Thuringia and Saxony.”
Racism everywhere
Of course, “Hart aber fair” primarily analyzes the elections in Brandenburg, especially the good performance of the AfD. And Katharina Warda has a very clear view on this. The black woman was born in Wernigerode and experienced exclusion as a child because of the color of her skin. That has not changed to this day, she says. She has been insulted and spat on in the street. Not recently, though. The AfD, but also the BSW, are so successful because they are new parties. “Both parties serve racist and right-wing narratives.” In East Germany, there is a certain continuity: there has been a lot of propaganda with strongly racist narratives there since the 1990s. During the election campaign in East Germany, Warda repeatedly noticed racist narratives being expressed by politicians. For example, it was claimed that if the foreigners were no longer there, pensions would rise. “That won’t work, that’s total nonsense. But this narrative is very strong, and the more you play it, the more people you’ll reach.”
Wagenknecht is not going to take it lying down that someone is calling her party racist. “I have respect for a lot of what you have written, but what you are now saying! We were voted for by an above-average number of migrants in the European elections,” she complains. “It is astonishing that we are now suddenly showing enthusiasm for racists. This type of debate has always made the AfD stronger in recent years.”
Kühnert believes: Politics is acting
Kevin Kühnert doesn’t want to see everything so negatively. The SPD general secretary examines the problem of AfD voters, talking about the crisis that young people in particular have experienced in recent years: high inflation, the Corona crisis, parents who are unable to accumulate wealth. Politicians have made many mistakes that need to be talked about, he says. But: “It’s simply not politics to list twenty things that have gone wrong in the last thirty years and say that this is the total shit in our country and people are fed up with it in the end.” Of course politicians are taking action, they have ensured that the minimum wage has increased and the low-wage sector has become smaller, that pensions in East and West have been adjusted. “Politicians have done something there.”
Apparently not enough, because Doreen Lorsch and the people in Dahme are still dissatisfied. Many others are too. And at some point during the program, Philipp Amthor comes out of his shell. He will talk to his Bundestag colleague from the region, organize someone who wants to talk to the people. And if he can’t find anyone, he will come himself. Kevin Kühnert hesitates, but eventually accepts the invitation, somewhat grumpily. And Sahra Wagenknecht, too, somehow. Finally, Louis Klamroth also promises to come along with a small film crew.
They won’t be able to solve the problems of the people in Dahme. But perhaps they can take away some of their fears about the future. If they are serious about what they are offering.