German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/201, pp. 25619-25620.
Herr
President. Ladies and gentlemen.
We stand at
the beginning of a super election year: Six state legislature elections, one
Bundestag election. Without announcement, the government delegations yesterday
entered a motion for today’s debate. It comprehensively empowers the
government: With a kind of emergency decree, it can intervene in all elections
procedures in which the parties nominate their candidates for the Bundestag.
Elections are the heart of democracy. This proceeding today is an open heart operation. Yet we must speak on it sufficiently before declaring in the Bundestag such a democratic emergency.
We must
debate this in committee. Remove this over-hasty motion from the daily order,
ladies and gentlemen.
With the
motion put forward today, such things as election by mail and digital voting
suddenly return to the foreground. They are, as you know, subject to
manipulation. No one can control who at home sends a letter or votes on a
computer; at party meetings, that can be done by personal identification.
Even the
director of Federal elections in principle views the expansion of election by
mail critically: Verbatim: With election by mail there always remains “a
residue of risk”. “An election,” he says verbatim, can “be held under pandemic
conditions without problem and with adherence to all hygiene prescriptions.”
That must also pertain to nominations assemblies.
Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens): That is the topic?
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): That is certainly not the topic!You cannot
thus over-night give such wide-ranging authority to the government and drive
all that through the parliament – without prior announcement, without prior
discussion, without consultation.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Have you read the motion?
Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens): It
is not pertinent!
That cannot be, ladies and gentlemen.
There is also
certainly no necessity.
The pandemic
situation has not at all changed in recent hours. In Nordrhein-Westfalen, the
AfD has already held over 30 nominations assemblies: With hygiene conditions,
without problems – it works.
As members,
we also gather together here in plenary session, physically on site; just so as
in all committees of parliament. That should not be possible for party
nominations assemblies? There is no reason to flog your plan so surprisingly
through parliament. That cannot be, ladies and gentlemen.
Before all,
the Bundestag delegations have given themselves rules, as occurs in a daily
order. The government delegations announced their motion submitted today –
important and central to politics – yet not in the Ältestenrat. Nothing of it! Why not? You have announced nothing of
the matter in the round of first parliamentary floor leaders. The day before
yesterday, on Tuesday: Not a word! Why not? That is what we are objecting to.
That is the problem here, ladies and gentlemen.
Where does
the pressure come from? Does it come from the Chancellor’s office? What is the
calculation behind it? We must speak of all of this, before we empower the
government with sweeping legal decrees. Take this motion from the daily order.
Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Man, man, man.
Josephine Ortleb (SPD): What’s with
the mask?
[trans: tem]
