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Green bosses about to resign? Habeck makes a clear suggestion - party blossoms personnel debate

2021-10-26T18:50:09.716Z


Not unexpected - but still a bang: a change could be imminent at the top of the Greens. Habeck and Baerbock are facing a traffic light resignation.


Not unexpected - but still a bang: a change could be imminent at the top of the Greens.

Habeck and Baerbock are facing a traffic light resignation.

Berlin - The Greens could soon face a change at the top of the party: Should the traffic light coalition come into being, the party leaders Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock could vacate their chairs - Habeck prepared the Greens on Tuesday for the constituent session of the Bundestag.

The background to this is the expected appointment of the two Greens chairmen as ministers in a new Scholz government.

Although the traffic light parties have not yet discussed items, as Habeck assured on Sunday at the ARD talk "Anne Will".

However, the two, he and Baerbock, are considered top contenders for important offices - such as foreign, finance or a new climate ministry.

For this case, Habeck has now prepared: "You can say so much, as a minister to be party chairman is incompatible with our party culture," he told the Phoenix broadcaster on Tuesday.

Greens: Habeck and Baerbock will probably react to “party culture” - separation of office and mandate takes effect

The announcement could be irritating. For example, with a view to the CDU, which to this day struggles with the fact that in the past three years - since Angela Merkel's retirement from the CDU leadership - the office of chancellor and chairman were no longer in one hand. With the Greens, however, a completely different tradition has prevailed since the early days of the former “anti-party” party. The “separation of office and mandate” applies.

Originally that meant: a person may not hold a public mandate and a party office at the same time.

After they were founded, the Greens took even more radical positions.

For example, MPs should sit a maximum of half a legislature in parliament before someone else took the seat.

This pushed the party to the limits of what is legally possible - and even more to the willingness of its best-known representatives in the Bundestag to cooperate.

In 1991 the so-called rotation principle was abolished.

But the separation of office and mandate has also been relaxed several times.

Traffic light minister?

Habeck then wants to give up the chairmanship of the Greens - "excluded"

The party statutes currently stipulate that members of the party's federal executive committee may not be members of the government at the same time. After a period of eight months at the latest, they must resign from one of the offices. Habeck himself made this transitional clause a prerequisite for his candidacy as party chairman in 2018 - at that time he was still serving as Environment Minister in Schleswig-Holstein. The consequence of this passage in any case is that Habeck and Baerbock would have to give up their party leadership within three quarters of a year if they were to become ministers in the new federal government.

Habeck also cited other reasons for the possible withdrawal from the party leadership: The office of chairman in a party like the Greens was "a backbreaking job" and by no means a "representative office", he said.

That is why "being a minister and party leadership excluded".

Greens: Baerbock and Habeck could resign soon - who will take over?

With this assessment, too, he differs massively from the Union or the FDP: In the event of an election victory, Armin Laschet would probably not only have become chancellor, but also remain chief of the CDU - and that Christian Lindner, as the newly crowned traffic light minister, will give up the chairmanship of the FDP seems excluded. Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, will initially concentrate on the chancellorship. Inevitably: He failed in the race for the SPD chairmanship due to the duo Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans.

The turn at the top of the Greens was not unpredictable.

Nevertheless, the party is now likely to have a staff debate.

Because it is still unclear who could succeed the two party leaders.

During the Greens' first phase of government there had been lively changes in the two chairmanship posts.

Before the red-green start, the then incoming Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin had resigned - as had Renate Künast in 2001 before her appointment as Minister of Agriculture.

During the Schröder government, among others, Gunda Röstel, Antje Radcke and Fritz Kuhn served as heads of the Greens.

One way or another, Joschka Fischer was regarded as the “secret chairman”.

(

fn / AFP

)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-10-26

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