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83 percent for Armin Laschet in postal votes: strengthened chairman, divided party

2021-01-22T18:31:40.332Z


83 percent for Armin Laschet in the postal vote - so the new CDU chairman takes office with a tailwind. But he did not unite the party by that.


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CDU chief Laschet

Photo: SEAN GALLUP / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

The mask is always in the way these days.

Armin Laschet, who has just been elected twice as the new CDU leader, cannot shine directly into the cameras at party headquarters, but first has to fumble the mouth and nose protection off his face and grab it in his bag.

But let's go.

On this Friday afternoon at just before five, Laschet is finally the ninth chairman of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany.

The delegates of the first fully digital CDU party congress had already elected him to this office last Saturday, but the vote had to be confirmed by postal vote.

With 52.6 percent, Laschet only narrowly prevailed against Friedrich Merz in the runoff election, on paper he has now reached 83.35 percent.

Even if only his name was available for the postal vote and neither Merz nor the third candidate Norbert Röttgen, who was eliminated in the first round: It is a result with which Laschet can be very satisfied.

You can see his relief after Thomas de Maizière, as chairman of the CDU electoral committee, announced the results of the postal vote.

983 election letters - out of 1001 delegates - had arrived in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, three of them could not be counted.

A good 83 percent for him means that many of those who voted digitally for Merz or Röttgen now apparently voted for Laschet.

This is a first step for the new chairman to achieve his goal: to unite the party again.

"My goal is: to lead and bring together," he says, recalling the different roots of the CDU: the Christian, the conservative, the liberal.

"This large participation and the result are a signal of the unity of the Union," says Laschet.

CDU is not yet one again

But it is not more than the first signals for the unity of the Union.

And Laschet should also know that, as things developed immediately after the announcement of his narrow election victory last Saturday.

First, Friedrich Merz responded to Laschet's offer for a seat on the CDU Presidium with the request, but then with the help of the new chairman to also move into the federal government as Minister of Economics - then Norbert Röttgen announced that he would again be without Laschet's support run the closest leadership circle of the party.

SPIEGEL has extensively reconstructed the conversations in the Berlin exhibition hall, which were very unpleasant for the newly elected CDU chief.

Merz finally made a semi-public withdrawal, he apologized in a letter to the CDU members for his actions on Monday evening and called for Laschet's support and confirmation of the new chairman in the postal vote.

And Röttgen, who was elected to the presidium, wants to finally support Laschet as best he can.

But the cracks in the party cannot be patched up so quickly - especially not between the hard core of the Merz supporters and the new chairman.

Massive resignations disappointed CDU members have not yet been documented

They cannot be appeased so quickly by appeals from Merz himself and prominent supporters such as Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble or the long-standing Hessian Prime Minister Roland Koch.

There is even talk of massive resignations of disappointed CDU members because of Laschet's election, even if there are no verifiable figures for this from the regional associations.

To capture this camp, the new party leader needs Merz, he has to involve him.

But how this should succeed after he refused a place in the presidium, as after his defeat at the 2018 party conference against Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is questionable.

Laschet doesn't have much time, however, because the state elections in Baden-Württemberg, of all places, are due on March 14, where Merz is particularly popular.

In order to regain the office of prime minister in the state, the CDU needs unity - and the maximum mobilization of its members and supporters.

The same applies to Rhineland-Palatinate, where a new state parliament is being elected at the same time

The elections in the southwest are again the first mood test for the new chairman, who will then have to get in touch with CSU chairman Markus Söder about the Union's candidacy for chancellor.

The more securely Laschet sits in the saddle, the more support he is likely to have from his own party.

It is already clear where the double-elected chairman will take his first official appearances at the weekend: to the state party conference of the Baden-Württemberg CDU and the state committee of party friends in Rhineland-Palatinate.

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Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-01-22

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