Baden-Württemberg Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 16/139, pp. 7987-7991.
I first want, and in the name of my delegation, to wish all of you here in the sovereign house and the citizens in the State a good New Year with the best of health.
The year 2021 unfortunately has not begun with the desired light at the end of the tunnel. We are still miles away from the promised vaccination, Herr Minister-president. Our basic rights are as before disempowered and in this wrong-way drive of decrees, one cannot with the best of will speak of democratic processes. Ladies and gentlemen, we here come together multiple times to a special sitting to debate over the decisions of a body not capable of decisions.
Heinrich Fiechtner: Quite right!
I ask you, the State government: When will you finally re-establish an orderly, democratic process?
Daniel Rottman (AfD): Very good.
Of “orderly”, we understand: Initially the parliament consults and reaches its majority decisions and in that connection you, Herr Minister-president, can debate with the Chancellor in so far as you still see the need.
Ladies and gentlemen, Baden-Württemberg is a Federal State. The subsidiarity principle must again attain recognition in this State. Depending on the competence, the decisions must be made here in Baden-Württemberg and carried further through Berlin to Brussels – and not the reverse, ladies and gentlemen.
What you are doing here is a disempowerment of our Federal principles and a neglect of parliamentary government in our State, ladies and gentlemen.
Andreas Stoch (SPD): At most, no
idea!
At the end of the past year, with your saviour, the Corona vaccine, you promised the citizens the light at the end of the tunnel. Before Christmas, you, Herr Minister-president, had very emotionally stated the following, I cite:
…the people will be vaccinated, and
then it is over with this pandemic…
Heinrich Fiechtner: Exactly! He said that!
The reality unfortunately appears otherwise. It is still dark in the tunnel. What you had ignited is a small tea candle beside the tracks in this tunnel. Yet of light, one cannot speak. The state of vaccine availability is a disaster, ladies and gentlemen. The Chancellor alone first of all bears the responsibility for this situation. Nevertheless, we cannot relieve you of your co-responsibility, Herr Minister-president, and you, Herr Lucha.
Why does the Chancellor especially bear responsibility for these failures? Already in June of the past year, Health Minister Jens Spahn and his colleagues from France, Italy and Holland had spoken of modalities like delivery numbers, conditions and contract negotiations. Frau Merkel was suspicious of these negotiations. She designated them as nationalist…She whistled back her Health Minister; she wanted that these negotiations be led by EU Commission President von der Leyen for the entire EU. I only say to you: Look at the state of the Bundeswehr, then you are able to form for yourself a picture of the capability of the Commission President.
The humiliation of Jens Spahn was nevertheless not enough for the Chancellor. She compelled from the four health ministers a letter of apology to the EU Commission President. Here, we should grant credibility to the “Bild” newspaper, even when in this letter Bonn stands in as the sender. That leaves me personally somewhat doubtful, yet it is to be credited in any case.
A cold-blooded demonstration of power and a new false decision with wide-ranging consequences for one’s own people – as already in regards the currency policy, the energy transformation and the refugee crisis, ladies and gentlemen.
With his efforts on behalf of the vaccine procurement, Health Minister Spahn had in view care for the existence [Daseinversorge] of our citizens. The Chancellor apparently does not know this term. These were undesired and unhelpful, as she so often stressed in her speeches. And why? Because the Chancellor prefers to put the vaccine procurement in the hands of Brussels, because she prefers to hand over full power to the Brussels centralized EU ruling body instead of to the health ministers of the national states, ladies and gentlemen – as if Brussels was now already the capital of Germany. What was the result? The Daseinversorge for the citizens of our country was neglected. It amounts to a failure of the EU’s socialist planned economy philosophy. And why, ladies and gentlemen? Because at the EU level, the decision process demands much too much time, because with 27 individual interests it can never arrive at a rapid result.
Here, where it is about the lives of the citizens in our country, in their view Brussels is the completely wrong decision level, ladies and gentlemen.
Anton Baron (AfD): Speed, speed!
Ladies and gentlemen, while other countries, like for example Israel or the U.S.A., by the end of the first quarter of 2021 want to and indeed will vaccinate a large portion of their population, the EU, and primarily Germany, move at a snail’s pace. It they continue the pace of the first two weeks, they will require in the best case six years, and in the worst case ten years, to have in fact vaccinated all those who are willing in this country.
Hans-Ulrich Sckerl (Greens): Such
nonsense.
– Figure it out.
Ladies and gentlemen, those responsible in our State and in our nation have here to a grave degree violated their oath of office to avert harm from the German people.
Ladies and gentlemen, an investigating committee in Berlin in regards these vaccine procurement failures of the Federal government, the Chancellor and the State executives, is the least which must be demanded.
Another aspect which also this morning was still not cleared up: Concerning the whole debate over vaccination, we should more intensely bring into focus voluntary vaccination. The government ever again expounds on this aspect; if one however listens to members of the ethics council, like Herr Professor Henn who wants to make available no intensive-care beds to vaccination opponents in case of a Corona infection, then one may be justified in asking: For what should such scientists be on an ethics council?
Christina Baum (AfD): Exactly!
Ladies and gentlemen, besides voluntary vaccination there is the question of the safety of the vaccine. It has quite astonished us, the AfD, that even the developer of the BionTech vaccine, Ugur Sahin, does not trust his development. He presently does not want his co-workers to be vaccinated because he fears failures resulting from side effects. That is not very reassuring, and provides the vaccine sceptics with fresh breath. Ladies and gentlemen, it must be left to each citizen himself whether he wants to live with or without vaccination.
President Muhterem Aras: Herr member Gögel, do you allow
an interim question from Herr member Dr. Fiechtner?
In the second round. At the moment, I want to bring my address to an end because the speaking time is running.
Many citizens perceive a vaccination as an intrusion upon bodily integrity.
Christina Baum (AfD): It is an
intrusion!
This opinion is worthy of respect. No law can and may disempower people’s free will, ladies and gentlemen. It may under no circumstances come to a discrimination of vaccination opponents. I here cite Jean Jacques Rousseau:
The freedom of man does not lie in that he can do what he
wants, but that he need not do what he does not want.
Christina Baum (AfD): That is very good!
Let us come to the latest decrees, which you today will ratify with your governing majority, not in fact presently at hand but which will nevertheless emerge, and which next Monday will enter into force.
We, the AfD, as before hold your preventive measures to be wrong and not purposeful. Now even the Federal government indirectly concedes that your previous preventive measures were not to the point. And you, Herr Minister-president, also must concede that the danger of infection exists not, as was supposed before the second lockdown, principally in lodgings and retail business, but principally in workplaces, in private households and the much affirmed ÖPNV [public transportation network]. Please explain here to the citizens in our State why such apparently senseless preventive measures were decided on and their currency now still prolonged.
Ladies and gentlemen, a household shall now be allowed to meet with one other person. Well and good, yet 50 examples could be brought here over which you yourselves would burst out laughing.
Let us take one, a household of five persons. When any of these persons have met with one additional person, they have all together met with an additional five persons. That would be allowed. Where please is the logic here?
Christina Baum (AfD): There is no
logic there!
A better example: A family member who wants to take out the garbage meets in the corridor persons from three additional households. Since it is forbidden to these people to meet, the family member must set down the garbage, probably midway, and take himself back to the dwelling. Yet on the way from and to work, this man – let us call him Herr Mustermann – sits in an overflowing ÖPNV with 40 additional persons who belong to 40 other households. That is desired and permitted.
Winfried Mack (CDU): Then where is
there an overflowing ÖPNV?
– Look at the practice. You do not ride the train.
Christina Baum (AfD): Because all drive autos, right?
If anyone in his free time wants to meet with friends, he may do so with one other person.
Christina Baum (AfD): Pure chicanery!
Ladies and gentlemen, that has no logic; that yields not sense. That may become no long-term situation.
Heinrich Fiechtner: That is a sadistic chicanery! Pure sadism!
Let us come to a further, in our view, senseless Corona preventive measure. As a consequence of unreliable numbers, data, facts – neither the RKI [Robert Koch Institute] nor health officials with their testing centers could deliver reliable data over the holidays – the school openings will be further shifted back. Now it is said that possibly from January 18 the children might again be sent to day-care or to in-person instruction in the Grundschulen. Whether that will actually happen – the Herr Minister-president has pursued that – will be decided next Thursday. The people must thus again adjust themselves to quite short-term alterations. It will be done as if to regulate simply everything in the families.
Why cannot the children be separated – a portion at school, a portion digital at home – for instruction? Because for one, two decades we have slumbered through digitalization in this country. Your statements do not place it foremost. You have for decades swept this topic under the rug and have not brought it forward decisively. Here, other countries are further.
Christina Baum (AfD): Clearly!
In Germany, we have WLAN in 25% of the school buildings – 25%! Why were the citizens of our country tested less during the holidays? Because the test centers and health offices had closed. Closed! They also had a holiday.
Surely if you speak of a catastrophe on a national scale, surely if you take these and those preventive measures and reduce the rights of the citizens, surely if you disempower our Basic Law, then for that you should be most obliged to concern yourselves so that you receive reliable and valid numbers from the test centers and health offices, even during the Christmas holidays, ladies and gentlemen. That is quite decisive.
Christina Baum (AfD): Exactly!
Heinrich Fiechtner: Yet it is still not right!
Ladies and gentlemen, to make perfect the chaos of decrees, you want to further reduce the radius of movement. If in a city or district the incidence figure rises over 200 positive tested per 100,000 inhabitants, people may move from their place of residence only up to 15 km. I am happy that in the Enz district now, the figure has again gone below 200; I can therefore speak here this morning.
Our Minister-president quite quickly perceived that his decree could be senseless and absolutely harmful for his re-election and therefore declared himself prepared to be unwilling to implement it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we, the AfD delegation, had already at the beginning of the first lockdown held your preventive measures to be false. We had already then indicated that the hotspots and possible dangers of infection lay elsewhere; not in the restaurants with their excellent implementation of the hygiene prescriptions, and not in the hotels and not in the barber shops, but in the industrial workplaces, in the household areas and in the ÖPNV. We therefore demand of you: End this unspeakable lockdown, finally put forward a long-term concept of how you want to protect the especially endangered groups of people, finally relieve the lack of personnel in the hospitals, stop considering the further closing of hospitals.
Christina Baum (AfD): Yes, that is decisive!
Go on the offensive, advertise for care and hospital staff. That would be a sensible preventive measure. Make available medically-certified FFP3 masks without cost to the vulnerable groups, create shopping times for vulnerable groups and seniors and inform the citizens in our State of that,
Anton Baron (AfD): Exactly!
how they can best defend themselves against the virus and best be able to strengthen their immune systems. Relieve the ÖPNV – the area where so many people meet one another – with additional taxis and buses for seniors. As an example, I commend your Oberbürgermeister Palmer in Tubingen.
Anton Baron (AfD): It is so!
The citizens of our State should for the present change to their own vehicles – that is now the safest means of transportation – so to protect themselves from infection.
Ladies and gentlemen, on the whole the AfD stands for self-determination before external determination. That is the essential aspect. With your fear and hysteria debate, you have lost every perspective.
Heinrich Fiechtner: Absolutely!
You ever again forget to mention that in regards to serious cases of illness, measured by the entire population, we are moving on a scale of thousandths.
Christina Baum (AfD): Yes, exactly!
You mention not a syllable of this aspect.
Finally procure valid numbers, especially for the present degree of infection for the entire population. These data are indispensable, together with the vaccinations, and in view of the percentage of those willing to be vaccinated, to ascertain a foreseeable end to the pandemic. That is the light at the end of the tunnel – when you finally lay on the table these scientific numbers.
We, the AfD delegation, call upon the citizens of our State to continue to critically examine the State government and at last – not only on grounds of the the recent failures in regards the vaccine procurement – vote them out of office on March 14, 2021, ladies and gentlemen.
[trans: tem]
