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SPD leader Lars Klingbeil
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
Boris Pistorius will become the new Minister of Defense - and with him the proportion of men in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's cabinet will increase: in future, the 16 ministries will be headed by nine men and seven women.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil has now explained the departure from the once-promised parity with the importance of Pistorius' personality (read the SPIEGEL analysis of the new defense minister here).
"In the past few days we had to make a decision on a specific personnel issue," said Klingbeil before a meeting of the Bavarian SPD parliamentary group.
"And Boris Pistorius is the right person for this job - and that's what we decided on." At the same time, Klingbeil asserted that the question of parity was important to the Chancellor and the SPD party leadership.
Pistorius will show "that he can lead the Bundeswehr and German security policy well through this challenging phase of the turning point".
It is about the question of how Ukraine can be further supported, how the Bundeswehr can be reformed and how procurement in the troops can be improved - so that the 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr can reach the soldiers quickly.
Even before it was clear that Pistorius would become the new defense minister, there were voices in the traffic light that gender parity in the cabinet must be maintained even when new appointments are made.
From the SPD, but also from the Greens, there was some sharp criticism after the personnel details became known: The SPD must not give up the intention of gender equality.
Left leader Janine Wissler also criticized the election of a male defense minister.
"By naming Boris Pistorius, Scholz says goodbye to parity within the traffic light government," said the politician to the "t-online" news portal.
It remains to be seen to what extent the SPD politician will succeed in "pushing back and consistently combating the infiltration of the Bundeswehr through networks and ideas from the far right," Wissler continued.
The problems in the Ministry of Defense are also "not New Year's Eve videos, but the squandering of funds to the armaments industry, a desolate procurement system and the ever-increasing armament," said the left-wing politician.
There was criticism from the Union of Pistorius' suitability as Minister of Defense.
However, this did not refer to the renunciation of the parity promise.
mrc/dpa
