“Unfortunately, the answer is concrete”

EThe Federal Chancellor, who appears in a television program that is broadcast immediately after “Bauer sucht Frau International”, must be serious about wanting to be close to the people. And so the RTL viewers can follow on Monday evening how Olaf Scholz sits at the table with presenter Pinar Atalay and four concerned citizens on “RTL Direkt” and talks about the big questions: about the fear of the consequences of the Ukraine war, about rising prices and the future of the children.

The key question of the program is officially “Can the chancellor crisis?”. Above all, however, this evening is about the question of whether the Chancellor can communicate in the crisis. This becomes clear when moderator Atalay presents a Forsa survey right at the beginning. When asked whether Scholz explained his policy sufficiently, 27 percent of those surveyed answered yes and 68 percent no.

So now he’s supposed to prove the opposite under laboratory-like conditions, at a table with four hand-picked interlocutors, who essentially give the moderator keywords. There is the steel worker who fears that without Russian oil and gas the lights will go out in Germany. The unemployed single mom wondering how to make ends meet. The self-employed financial service provider who thinks that the government doesn’t have her finances under control and finally the woman from Ukraine who worries about her relatives.

Scholz comments on the election in NRW

Before the people have their say, moderator Atalay first wants to know from the chancellor whether the SPD has lost so badly in North Rhine-Westphalia despite or because of him. He replies, in a dark suit and a light blue, patterned tie: “We would all have wished for a better result in North Rhine-Westphalia.” CDU) to be replaced immediately based on the election result. Now we will look again at the possibilities for forming a government. “That is also the case: the parties that make up the federal government in Berlin, here in Germany, have a majority in the state parliament. Maybe something will come of it.”

After the short interview with the Chancellor, Scholz takes a seat between the steel worker and the single, unemployed mother. When asked how people with little money are supposed to cope in the face of rising prices, he answers in detail, as in a government survey, and speaks of heating cost subsidies and tax relief. And so it goes on when Ukraine becomes an issue.

32-year-old Viktoria Prytuliak, who came to Germany from Ukraine as a teenager, wants to know how it came about that Germany was so dependent on Russian oil. Scholz listens with a stoic look, his hand on the water glass. The words with which he introduces his answer say a lot about his way of communicating with the citizens. “If you take a closer look at the situation,” says Scholz, and begins a lecture on the three fossil fuels coal, oil and gas. He explains how coal from Russia will be replaced by other imports from autumn and how this will be possible with oil by the turn of the year.