German
Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/2, pp. 31-32.
Frau
President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The coalition
talks drag on. This disunity is great in regards important themes. The viewpoints
are far from one another.
Christian Lindner (FDP): What is meant by “drag on”? Make a historical comparison, good man!
Already in
last week’s sitting, I needed to conduct an orders of business debate because
you denied to the AfD its legitimate claim to present the elder president in
the Bundestag; for on one thing you here can always unite, ladies and gentlemen:
To elide the parliamentary rights of the AfD.
Yet worse
still: In the past sitting you elected the new Bundestag vice-presidents.
According to the orders of business, each delegation has a vice-president, and
each received one, only not the AfD.
Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): New debate format!
For four
years now it is so.
Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): On what then are you in fact speaking?
With all
these unfair machinations
Marco Buschmann (FDP): Groundhog Day! [Und täglich grüsst das Murmeltier!]
you do not belittle
us, ladies and gentlemen. We prevail in spite of it.
You moreover
now allow to occur something even more perfidious. Now it is about the
parliamentary core domain: It is about the speaking time.
Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): You are certainly still speaking! We nevertheless listen to you!
You of the
other delegations have decided to
suddenly alter the debate times and thereby the speaking times. We have, ja, in the Bundestag basically two
formats for the debates: A shorter one, in which run approximately
three-quarters of all statements, and a longer one for special themes. For the
briefer debates you have now decided: These in the future shall be 31 minutes
long. How so 31? The longer debate format you suddenly set at a comical 67
minutes. Hello? 31 and 67 minutes for debates here in the German Bundestag? Why
these utterly arbitrary and contorted prime numbers? How do you arrive at such
twisted things? I can tell you where that comes from: These are precisely the numbers
of minutes which most injure the AfD and which favor the others. That is the
only reason. There is no other, ladies and gentlemen.
Norbert Kleinwächter (AfD): That is a disgrace!
Since,
according to these twisted minutes numbers, following the usual Sainte-Laguë/Schepers
method, the AfD has only three minutes speaking time. At the beginning of the
last legislature, our delegation had five minutes. Then suddenly it was only
four;
Marco Buschmann (FDP): That has to do with the election!
now, with the
twisted numbers tricks, only three minutes, while other delegations here by
comparison have optimal speaking times.
Marco Buschmann (FDP): You have lost the election, Herr Baumann. If one has fewer voters, one also has less speaking time! That is democracy!
With such
sneakings, ladies and gentlemen, which you in common in the backrooms contrive,
you curtail not only the speaking time of the only conservative opposition here
in house, you also devalue the votes of millions of voters whose wishes and
interests shall here be systematically belittled and pushed to the side.
Besides, the
CDU colleagues today want to complain of the orders of business tricks of the
new Ampel [traffic light coalition]
majority – hear, hear! – by which the CDU may have been injured in regards the
committee assignment.
Claudia Roth (Greens-Augsburg): Which committee assignment?
Dear
colleagues of the CDU, it happens you suddenly bestir yourselves over an
injury? For four long years we after all ourselves have been party to the worst
injury of an opposition delegation in the history of the German Bundestag.
Michael Grosse-Bömer (CDU/CSU): Nonsense!
A gross offense!
Claudia Roth (Greens-Augsburg): Hey!
Mask on!
Stephan Brandner (AfD): Who then is
Hey? Hey, shut up!
[trans: tem]
