German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/224,
pp. 28558-28559.
Herr President. I can hear and understand you. – Right honorable
ladies and gentlemen.
We have with surprise taken note of the coalition’s motion
of two days ago which shall constitute an election law reform shortly before
the end of the 19th legislative period. It can now no longer effect
a damage reduction prior to the coming Bundestag election. According to the
newest, not uncomplicated calculations, which are based inter alia on election
forecasts, we hasten toward a mammoth Bundestag which will have between 750 and
900 members.
This nevertheless is no surprise. For in the area of an
overdue election reform, over which mock debates were protracted for over three
years in this house, precisely this scenario was predicted by experts in case
of an absence of reform. The loss of respect for democracy and this Bundestag, referred
to many times by the Bundestag president and which in regards such numbers we
will now feel shortly before the Bundestag election, was knowingly brought
about by the coalition.
A good 100 public law teachers in the autumn of the last
year publicly admonished that it will be seen in regards the central question
of the size of the Bundestag whether one’s own shirt or the coat of the
commonwealth is more important to the members. The outcome, ladies and
gentlemen, is unequivocal.
Against this background needs be understood the coalition’s
initiative. If it is now openly acknowledged that many hundreds of offices will
organized for members and their co-workers, that many new drivers will be hired
and that each additional member over the 598 foreseen by the legislature
results in some 500,000 euros per year in direct costs for the Federal budget,
then will the people’s rage let fly. It just has to do – quite incidentally –
with 200 overpaid members, a sum of 100 million euros per year, 400 million
euros over the legislative period, and this in times of a state of emergency.
The motion’s sponsors refer to the odd instruction of §55 of
the Federal Election Law, introduced in September, according to which a “reform
commission” shall be “immediately” formed by the Bundestag. Named in the law as
individual themes were the following series: The voting age of 16, the “length
of the legislative period”, and the “modernization of the work of the
parliament”. The size of the Bundestag, which all professionals hold to be the
prominent problem, does not at all appear as a matter of inquiry. That is pure
arrogance of power and misuse of mandate, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Subsequently appears the idea to examine whether the state should prescribe to
the parties how they, from point of view of gender, would have to present their
candidates lists, thus a quota parliament instead of an equal opportunity for
each male and female citizen to become a member. That is the demand for a
violation of the constitution, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
It has taken seven months for the installation decision with
its immediate effect. The time allowed for an interim report of the commission
shall run some three to four months, extending over the pre-election summer and
ending a few days after the Bundestag election. At least in the inquiry instruction
appears the – I quote – “effective limitation of the growth of the Bundestag”,
although in no way a reduction to the size previously foreseen by the law.
Since the process is also still under the law of discontinuity, the intended
proceeding is a farce. It will certainly illustrate – I come straight to
conclusion, Herr President – why the present Bundestag has achieved no reform,
and this even though the AfD’s signed draft, presented for a vote, solves the
big problem perfectly.
Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki:
Herr colleague, you must now please come to a conclusion.
To a farce, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, we do not
lend our voices. We thus reject this law.
[trans: tem]
