Friday June 25th 2021
Resignations due to women’s statute
List dispute between the Saar Greens escalated
Last weekend the Greens met in Saarland for a turbulent state party conference. In the aftermath, the party opposes the top candidate it has just elected. Now there is a hail of resignations, the green chaos is perfect.
The Saarland Greens chairman Ralph Rouget has resigned from his office in the dispute over the list of candidates for the federal election. Rouget resigned his post just five days after being elected chairman, reports the Saarland Broadcasting (SR). Accordingly, in addition to Rouget, other responsible persons resigned from the state executive, including assessor Ute Kirchhoff. The country’s deputy chairman Irina Gaydukova left the party after a much criticized performance therefore even completely. She ran for second place on the list.
The background is a turbulent state party conference last weekend. On Sunday, the former head of the Saarland Greens, Hubert Ulrich, secured the party’s first place on the list for the federal election. But only after the now relieved state chairwoman Tina Schöpfer failed several times.
The election of Ulrich caused widespread criticism within the Greens. At the party, the odd places on the list are reserved for women. The fact that Ulrich stood up against the chairman of the Green Youth in Saarland, Jeanne Dillschneider, and took first place on the list, contradicts this regulation, known as the women’s statute. Assessor Kirchhoff is said to have given this circumstance according to the SR as a reason for her resignation.
Controversial for a long time
An alliance within the Saarland Greens continues to threaten to exhaust “all possibilities within the party” in order to contest the vote. The local association Rehlingen-Siersburg does not want to support Ulrich in the election campaign for the federal election. “What was organized here has maximally destructive potential. You couldn’t have driven a larger wedge into the Saarland Greens,” said the local association chairman Alexander Raphael on Thursday. Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock also criticized the lineup. “We wanted it differently,” she said last Monday in Berlin.
Ulrich, on the other hand, considers the resignation demands to be inappropriate. He was elected in a secret, democratic vote with a two-thirds majority and saw no reason to withdraw, he said in the SR. He described an appeal by the federal executive to the state executive to reverse the state list as an inconceivable process and a massive encroachment on the autonomy of the state association.
Ulrich has long been controversial among the Greens because of several controversies. Among other things, the regional association, under his leadership, had spoken out in favor of a Jamaica coalition on the Saar in 2009, although arithmetically red-red-green would also have been possible at the time.
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