Is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer a suitable chancellor candidate? Shortly before the CDU party congress in Leipzig, the chairman confesses after almost a year in office mistakes.
In an interview for the ARD documentary "The Emergency Government - Unloved Coalition", Kramp-Karrenbauer lapses first in the European election campaign in the spring. She had "not pursued the restructuring in the party headquarters after taking over the presidency" consistently enough. There was an old and a new team. "It was not a one-stop campaign."
At the same time she expressed understanding that there had been criticisms of her person in the party. "One party, the CDU in particular, of course, always wants a chairman, of which she knows: This is up front, on which I can rely, that makes no mistakes," said the defense minister. The party then took their mistakes but perceived. The first year as a party leader had gone by her "not without a trace".
Self-critically, she also commented on the reaction to a critical video by the creator Rezo. "The decisions on when to react, how to respond have fallen in an unbelievable rush where each of the participants has just had five minutes to talk to each other between two campaign appearances, which was fundamentally wrong," she said.
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The CDU would have "had to react very quickly to the video from the start, it would not have mattered what kind of reaction it would have taken, it would have been very quick."
Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) comments even more sharply on the crisis management of the CDU leadership on the video: "The reaction was catastrophic, totally awkward, and later the attempt to answer with a video, once from the CDU, then from the CSU - that was just not good. "
At the CDU party congress, a debate is also expected on the poor poll numbers of the party and on the question of when a decision should be made as to who should draw for the Union as a leading candidate in the next federal election. Kramp-Karrenbauer pleads for a decision in December 2020.
The program is to be broadcast on 2 December.