“It’s five past twelve”
CDU politician Hans denies Merz chancellor format
07/25/2023, 07:30 am
Friedrich Merz’ statements on the AfD drive the CDU. In an interview, the former Prime Minister of Saarland, Tobias Hans, said he was concerned about his party leader’s course and voiced severe criticism.
The former Prime Minister of Saarland, Tobias Hans, has expressed doubts about Friedrich Merz’s suitability as a candidate for chancellor and attested to the CDU leader’s lack of leadership. When asked “Stern” whether Merz was still the right chairman, Hans said: “You have to tremble before every summer interview because you don’t know what will come out of it in the end. To be honest, I don’t want to imagine that a Chancellor appointed by the CDU would cause such concerns.”
Hans added: “And if someone had the declared goal of halving the AfD – and then easily doubling it – then that is at least not a sign of success. And even the change of a general secretary after only a year and a half does not speak for leadership,” said Hans, referring to the change from Mario Czaja to Carsten Linnemann in the post of general secretary.
Statements by Merz in the ZDF summer interview about dealing with the AfD at the municipal level were interpreted by many as a softening of the clear demarcation between the CDU and the right-wing populist party. Merz called such allegations absurd on Monday and made it clear that from his point of view his party’s incompatibility decision also applies and that there is no cooperation between the CDU and the AfD at the municipal level either. Merz also received a lot of criticism from within his own ranks for his statements on Sunday.
“The party leadership still has to learn that”
Hans emphasized that the CDU must seek consensus with democratic parties and not with the AfD, which he described as a “political enemy”. In doing so, he explicitly drew a link to the end of the Weimar Republic. “Now it’s becoming difficult for a district or district chairman at the local level to give up not electing a local mayor with the AfD. This is exactly how the failure of an entire state in the Weimar Republic slowly began and led to terrible things that were brought to the world in the name of Germany. I can only remember that the NSDAP was also elected in democratic elections. The AfD now stands at 22 percent nationwide. It’s not five to twelve, but five after twelve Friedrich Merz must finally see that,” Hans warned.
Hans considers the question of whether Merz will be a candidate for chancellor to be “completely open”. “Particularly in difficult times, it is important that a party’s top candidate has government experience – and a sure instinct when it comes to difficult issues,” said Hans. He made it clear that the Union had good heads of government in the countries that had to be brought into the team. “We are only strong together. The party leadership still has to learn that,” warned Hans.
At the same time, he warned of a course shift by the Union away from the centre. Responding to statements by Merz, who described the CDU as an “alternative for Germany – with substance” and the Greens as the main opponent, Hans said: “I rather suspect that this is a strategy to try to establish a new sound in the CDU. This is the farewell to the middle course with which the CDU has governed successfully for almost 20 years.”