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Djir-Sarai: Secretary-General with Iranian roots
Photo: Adam Berry/Getty Images
Bijan Djir-Sarai, member of the Bundestag
has been elected the new General Secretary of the FDP.
The 45-year-old received 89 percent of the valid votes at the party conference in Berlin on Saturday.
Djir-Sarai had already held the office on an interim basis in recent months after the previous Secretary General, Volker Wissing, gave up the post when he was appointed Federal Minister of Transport.
In his application speech, Djir-Sarai announced that he would "never, never, never be an additional government spokesman."
“My mission is: FDP.” He sees it as the task of the Secretary General, but also of the entire party, to make it clear “that we are not part of a political camp, but of course an independent political force in the center”.
Born in Tehran
Djir-Sarai was born in the Iranian capital of Tehran in 1976.
He passed his Abitur in Grevenbroich in North Rhine-Westphalia and studied business administration in Cologne.
He joined the FDP in 1996 and was elected to the Bundestag for the first time in 2009, where he made a name for himself primarily as a foreign politician.
sms/dpa/AFP