Thursday, December 02, 2021
Party is repositioning itself
Nouripour wants to be the head of the Greens
Because Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck are taking over government posts, the Greens are looking for a new duo for the party leadership. Now there is the first candidate: The foreign and defense politician Nouripour wants to stand for election at the end of January.
Foreign politician Omid Nouripour wants to become chairman of the Greens. “I would like to apply to the digital party congress at the end of January to become party chairman,” announced the 46-year-old in the recording of the ZDF program “Markus Lanz” on Thursday, as the German press agency learned. The Greens will vote for their new leadership on January 28th and 29th. Nouripour is the first to officially declare his candidacy. The deputy party leader Ricarda Lang is being discussed as co-chair.
Since the current chairmen Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck take over government offices, they have to give up their party offices according to the rules of the party statutes. Nouripour was born in Iran and came to Germany with his parents at the age of 13. In recent years he has made a name for himself in the Bundestag as a foreign and defense politician. In the election, he won a direct mandate in his hometown of Frankfurt am Main.
“This city and this party have given me everything I am now and for which I cannot be sufficiently grateful,” said Nouripour at Lanz. “If I could give something back as party leader in this situation, it would be a great pleasure for me.”
The top of the Green parliamentary group will also be reorganized. The previous parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter no longer wants to run for the election planned for next week. Hofreiter’s co-chair, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, is being traded as the successor to Bundestag Vice-President Claudia Roth, who is to become Minister of State for Culture in the new federal government. Two women are now favored as the new dual leadership: economic expert Katharina Dröge and parliamentary group manager Britta Haßelmann.
It would only be the second time since the Greens entered the Bundestag in 1983 that the parliamentary group is led by a pair of women. Krista Sager and Göring-Eckardt were parliamentary group leaders between 2002 and 2005. According to the Group’s rules of procedure, at least one of the two chairmen must be a woman. Hofreiter had already made it clear internally before the federal election that he wanted to give up the chairmanship of the parliamentary group. However, the left wing of the party left the party empty-handed when it came to assigning posts to the new federal cabinet. In his place, the Realo Cem Özdemir will take over the Ministry of Agriculture if the traffic light coalition comes about as planned. This has caused massive anger among the party links.