Mannheim's CDU city councilor Thomas Hornung has rejected requests to leave the party because the live broadcast of Südwestrundfunk (SWR) was canceled because of him.
"I have no reason to quit," said the former office manager of the CDU member of the Bundestag, Nikolas Löbel, who resigned due to the mask affair, of the dpa news agency.
The CDU state parliament members Tim Bückner from Schwäbisch Gmünd and Winfried Mack from Aalen (both Ostalbkreis) had asked Hornung to leave the party.
Hornung had interrupted and criticized the reporter Natalie Akbari for so long at the district party conference of the Mannheim CDU on Friday evening during a live broadcast of the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) until she broke off the contribution.
Akbari was on the TV show "SWR Aktuell Baden-Württemberg" to report from the conference room on the debate about the involvement of the district CDU in the business of the former member of the Bundestag Löbel.
Hornung had found the TV report annoying by his own account.
(Read more about the incident here.)
The SWR criticized Hornung's approach as "questionable".
SWR editor-in-chief Fritz Frey accused the city council of preventing a planned presentation of different positions.
Hornung accuses SWR of “professional defects”
Hornung said his behavior was "situational" and was due to professional deficiencies on the part of the SWR team. These are exemplary of the "eroding credibility" of public broadcasting. The SWR again emphasized that it was primarily interested in continuing to report objectively on the complex. The place and time of the interview were agreed with the CDU.
Löbel had caused a stir nationwide because of the corona mask affair and finally withdrew from politics.
This involved commissions of around 250,000 euros for Löbel's company.
As SPIEGEL revealed, the company collected around a quarter of a million euros because it brokered purchase contracts for corona protective masks between a Baden-Württemberg supplier and two private companies in Heidelberg and Mannheim.
What was particularly disturbing was the fact that Löbel initially defended the commissions he had earned as "in line with the market".
(Read more here.)
Löbel also hit the headlines because he had used the CDU district office in Mannheim as the company headquarters and for his parliamentary activities.
The dispute in the Mannheim CDU mainly revolves around questionable rental contracts in the district office.
ngo / dpa
