Germany Lindner wants to examine himself - where is the FDP heading?
The FDP has to look for a new Secretary General for the Bundestag election campaign - and party leader Christian Lindner also wants to take another look at himself in light of the Liberal crisis. "Of course I had and still have to examine myself," Lindner said on ARD's "Tagesthemen" program.
30.11.2024, 05:39
SDA
However, he remains convinced that his decision to leave the traffic light coalition was the right one due to a lack of policy change. He therefore made his party "the offer to lead them into the federal elections", Lindner replied on ZDF's "heute journal" when asked about a possible resignation.
On ARD television, Lindner called the working paper finally published by the FDP on Thursday after previous media research, which described the Liberals' possible exit from the coalition with military terms such as "D-Day" and "open field battle", "stylistically unconvincing". It had also never been discussed in political committees and he had had no knowledge of it. However, he did not blame the employees who had drafted the paper. "I have overall responsibility for the FDP and I am committed to it."
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had pre-empted the FDP's exit from the coalition with the SPD and Greens by dismissing Lindner as Finance Minister at the beginning of November.
Buschmann and Strack-Zimmermann speak out
Former Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, who is considered a possible successor to Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai, who resigned on Friday, was already back in election campaign mode on Platform X: "Right now, a liberal party is more necessary than ever," he wrote. Trust must be regained.
Another prominent representative of the party, MEP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, wrote on X: "We need a strong FDP that doesn't play clown, but is aware of its responsibilities." When asked by WDR whether she was in favor of Lindner resigning, she replied: "No, I don't see why." The general secretary and the party's federal managing director - Lindner's former office manager Carsten Reymann, who has since also resigned - were responsible for the mistakes in dealing with the "D-Day" paper. She called the working paper "intellectually and linguistically simply subterranean".
A pyramid and phase IV
The FDP had published the paper on the traffic light exit on its website. In particular, a diagram of the "D-Day pyramid" with several stages ending with the "start of the open field battle" in "Phase IV" led to public outrage - and ridicule on social media. D-Day" is usually associated with the Allied landings in Normandy during the Second World War.
According to several polls, even before the affair, the FDP was at risk of leaving parliament again after the planned new Bundestag elections on February 23. The party had already failed to reach the five percent threshold once before in 2013. Lindner then led the party back into the Bundestag in 2017 and into government with the SPD and Greens in 2021. He has been party leader for almost eleven years.
