Bye bye Habock
Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck will bid farewell to the party leadership at the Green party conference today, and Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour will probably be elected as their successors on Saturday.
Has the Greens ever had more successful leaders?
Not really.
The record of Habeck and Baerbock is remarkable
, says my colleague Jonas Schaible, who keeps an eye on the Greens in our office in the capital: The two led the party into government for the second time at federal level, to their best result in the Bundestag election (14.8 percent ), for the best result in a national election (20.5 percent in the European elections) - and now the two are foreign ministers and vice chancellors.
You have positioned the party as "programmatically left-wing, but habitually hyper-centric force with conservative tendencies
. "
And yet: Baerbock actually wanted to be chancellor now, with this goal the Greens went into the election campaign.
Since the almost 15 percent then look lean.
What's next?
"Baerbock and Habeck have to find a role, give the party space, allow contradiction, while both are already looking at the 2025 election," says Jonas.
Because then, that's clear, the Greens want to play for the chancellor's office again.
Or, as the outgoing federal manager Michael Kellner put it in the SPIEGEL interview: "The dream is not over just because it didn't work out the first time."
In the traffic light coalition, this could still cause trouble
as election day approaches.
Having his potential challenger Habeck (or his challenger Baerbock?) in his own cabinet doesn't make it any easier for SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Green party manager Kellner: "The dream of the chancellorship is not over"
Merz is trump, part 2
The first Merz days in the Christian Union are off to a good start for Friedrich Merz (and you could follow it almost every day here in the »Situation in the Morning«).
On Saturday he started the presidency with almost 95 percent;
on Tuesday he was able to show a clear edge against the right wing and initiate party order proceedings against Max Otte, who is still a member of the CDU and AfD candidate for federal president;
and on Thursday parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus sent his declaration of
capitulation
to the Union MPs.
"Our colleague Friedrich Merz" informed him "that he intends to apply for the office of chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in any case," writes Brinkhaus.
game over
He therefore proposes to "quickly create clarity"
, the election of the parliamentary group leader should be brought forward from the end of April to mid-February.
Merz is thus following the
principle of Merkel's accumulation of power
, which he experienced first-hand a good 20 years ago: CDU leader Merkel announced a candidacy for the parliamentary group chairmanship, which Merz held at the time.
After a moment's thought, he didn't allow a vote to be taken and withdrew.
history repeats itself.
At least for the CDU.
Union faction: Brinkhaus renounces the presidency in favor of Merz
Dirty vaccination for the little ones?
On Tuesday, I reported at this point on my absurd experiences with Berlin local politicians and their passivity in the fight against Corona: How a CDU-left politician duo here in the city prevented dozens of daycare centers from being equipped with air filters.
And I asked you, dear readers, to tell us about your
experiences in day-care centers and schools
.
What can I say: The problem now seems even bigger to me than I assumed from my own experience.
I received more than a hundred letters from all over the country.
Most of them show what goes wrong when it comes to protecting little people.
But some also give hope.
In the end, reading it didn't make me so angry anymore, more sad.
Many of your e-mails had this point in common:
For two years the children have given up and shown solidarity with us adults, but they hardly got anything in return.
Look, for example, at the still large number of people who refuse to vaccinate in this country.
Of course, the letters are not representative of the situation in the country.
But they give important insights, I think.
In general, many parents, teachers and educators report great confusion, unclear specifications and the failure of municipal decision-makers.
Sometimes day care providers or local authorities refuse to install air filters at first, but then at least let the parents do it.
Still others of you report how you fought for many months but eventually had to give up.
A Munich woman with two daycare children
who is plagued by umpteen quarantines
writes to me: »My children are in de facto lockdown and I often notice that I am well above my load limit.«
She fought “at different levels against mills”, for example to introduce pool PCR tests in the daycare center and thus be able to break chains of infection at an early stage.
All in vain, she writes.
This January she already had the second quarantine with the children behind her.
One
educator
finds it strange that there are fire safety exercises in the daycare center every six months, but "there isn't even any professional advice on infection protection".
Most, he says, would not take corona infections in children seriously at all and therefore neglect to protect them.
A mother from Stade
also confirms this
: The city simply let requests for air filters drip off.
It is too complex and airing is enough.
A
high school teacher from Rhineland-Palatinate
writes: "No hope for an air filter." She now sees herself more as a "ventilation specialist" who works in a "refrigerator that is potentially infected with viruses".
A
headmistress
reports on her "personal odyssey" with the responsible district, which strictly refuses to call for subsidies and to purchase air filters. Her impression from the two Corona years: All decisions would be politically circumvented. Her proposal: suspension of federalism during the pandemic, nationwide uniform regulations, such as nationwide air filters and WLAN for schools.
And a
grandfather from Rhineland-Palatinate
writes to me about tiresome discussions about the effectiveness of air filters: They are still considered superfluous "like the masks in the beginning".
The mistake in the debate is based on the wrong question: »Can air filters replace ventilation?
No, they can't, but in addition to ventilation, they are an important component of protection against infection with the virus.« Incidentally, he notes, this rejection of air filters did not prevent the purchase of numerous parliament and administration buildings.
Is it possible that a decision will ultimately be made at the municipal level as to whether the fight against Corona is really serious?
Could it be that it is less important who is chancellor or health minister?
Is it possible that a decision will ultimately be made at the municipal level as to whether the fight against Corona is really serious - or not?
At least that is shown by the beautiful positive examples that readers have reported on.
A
father from Berlin
who has his children looked after in a state-owned day-care center has had good experiences with this: All rooms are equipped with air filters, "thanks to the determined commitment of the managing director".
A father from Oberaudorf in Bavaria reports
that there are air filters in the day-care center, elementary school and secondary school: “There was no need for a parent initiative to do this.
The municipality has set a clear priority here and has consistently drawn on state subsidies.« And he also writes: »Whether it is due to the air filters or something else: the day care center that did not participate in the procurement of the air filters has been much more often Quarantine measures affected.«
A
mother from the Ahrweiler district
near Bonn writes that last March a cross-party decision was made to purchase air filters for the schools in her community and that they were already installed in June: “We feel like we’re getting along very well with the sick leave in the schools concerned. «
A
school principal from Bavaria
writes that her city equipped all classrooms with air purification devices in the fall.
Together with the obligation to wear masks and a strict test regime, people have gotten through the winter well so far, and the lessons are running “without any problems”.
And a
mother from Idar-Oberstein
reports that the daycare provider has always refused air filters, but after pressure from the parents said at some point that they should simply get and install some themselves.
'Thank goodness an anonymous benefactor had donated air filters and will pay for maintenance too.
Now we finally have air filters.«
We at SPIEGEL will stay on top of this topic.
Winner of the day...
… is Joachim Herrmann.
Although Bavaria's interior minister is the longest-serving of all his state colleagues, he is now chairing the conference of interior ministers for the first time.
The 65-year-old CSU politician has been at the start since 2007, when the Bavarian Prime Minister was still called Günther Beckstein.
Herrmann, previously CSU faction leader, hesitated a bit before moving to the ministry because he found his current job so nice and would have liked to have had a postponement.
But Beckstein apparently made it clear: it's now or never.
And Herrmann has been there ever since.
The latest news from the night
Biden apparently promises Ukraine further support:
In a telephone call, the presidents of both countries agreed on "joint measures".
Meanwhile, the strength of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border appears to be increasing
Xiomara Castro sworn in as Honduras' first female president:
the country will be ruled by a woman for the first time.
Thousands of spectators came to Xiomara Castro's inauguration, and the US Vice President was also a guest.
Castro takes up her post amid a political crisis
Swedish government approves plans for nuclear waste repository:
The country wants to follow Finland's example and now also build a repository for nuclear waste.
It is to be built 500 meters below ground in Forsmark.
The two countries are the first with their plans
The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today
Corona in Saxony and Thuringia: Omikron is coming for sure - only later
Danger of war in Eastern Europe: Why Recep gives Tayyip Erdoğan the mediator
New album by Tocotronic: catchy slogans for the inner turmoil of our time
Guest post by Richard C. Schneider:
Why I don't need Holocaust Remembrance Day
I wish you a good start into the day.
Yours, Sebastian Fischer
