Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/5, pp. 228-229.
The sixth
imposition is the shameless rip-off of automobile drivers in this city.
Carsten Schatz (Linke): Harmless!
Frau Giffey
writes: “The goal of the State government is a climate neutral Berlin.” – Here,
automobile drivers are naturally disturbing and are only of interest as a
possible source of money. Frau Giffey therefore wants to significantly raise
the parking fees. Resident parking fees shall be multiplied by a factor of
twelve, from a hitherto 20 euros to 240 euros. In the mid-term, only electric
autos will still be allowed to drive within the S-Bahn ring. The Senate wants
to ban combustion engines. For Frau Giffey and her colleagues, that is clearly
no problem; they will be chauffeured. Yet what are the many Berlin families,
seniors and tradesmen who are not able to procure a new automobile then to do? For
these people, this driving ban and increase of expenses is catastrophic.
Such measures
create an inner city which only the rich are still able to afford, thanks to
left-left-green policy. It becomes yet more absurd. Frau Giffey writes: “The
Senate is striving for the connection of the BER by means of the bicycle
transport network.” – Ladies and gentlemen, that is just looney. Who rides a
bicycle to the airport? Thus are the Senate’s priorities.
The new
airport does not function. The transport connection for automobile drivers,
taxis and with the ÖPNV [public transportation] is sub-optimal, to say nothing
of a subway connection. Here, the SPD is still pondering how it actually stands
in this regard. But the bicycle is then good for reaching the BER. That is, with permission, provincial.
For this
Senate, the bicycle anyhow appears to be the transport means of the future. Therefore
the Friedrichstraße shall continue to remain closed to automobile traffic,
against the resistance of store owners who need to bear considerable losses.
150 business managers a few days ago publicly requested to finally lift the
traffic closure. Yet our Green Environment Senator remains cold. She even wants
to extend the closure to the Gendarmenmarkt.
By means of
your anti-auto policy, you drive the business in Friedrichstraße to ruin, and
not only there. Retail trade is dying and you promote the business of billionaires
like Jeff Bezos of Amazon. And that is no social policy. Our position is clear:
Driving an automobile in Berlin ought to be no privilege of the rich.
The seventh
imposition in the government program is the one-sided remembrance policy of
this Senate. Frau Giffey declares, verbatim:
The coalition will continue to remember…the colonial past, national socialism and a divided Berlin.
The remembrance
of the colonial past is important and right. And especially today, on the 77th
anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, it becomes
clear how important and necessary are thoughts of the many victims of the
darkest time here in Germany.
Anne Helm (Linke): Without blushing – unbelievable!
It is ever
again inconceivable to me what men have done to other men and can do. Nevertheless:
The leftist Senate obviously does not want to remember divided Berlin. Here, I
need ask you, Frau Giffey: – You have rightly said, you were still a child as
you grew up in the DDR. I am a few years older and experienced it as a youth,
as a young woman. – Who then divided Berlin? I say to you: It was the
colleagues of the Linke. These people, with whom you sit at table,
Anne Helm (Linke): Ja, personally!
drew a wall
through this city so that people in the east of the city could no longer
escape. Those who nevertheless attempted that were imprisoned, confined and
shot. Thus it appears.
I therefore
propose to you: We should not only remember divided Berlin. We should remember
the SED dictatorship. The Stasi terror needs to continue to be cleared up, and
indeed without regard for individual parties or persons.
You however
do not want to clear up this dark chapter because you do not want to alienate
your leftist coalition partners. Instead, the Berliners should now be ashamed
of episodes in Geramn colonial history. This will not correct the historical
reality. We want a remembrance culture which is not one-sidedly aligned.
Lars Düsterhöft (SPD): “Vogelschiss”, wa?
With
permission of the President, I cite a well-known personality:
Silke Gebel (Greens): You mean Björn
Höcke?
…German history consists not only of a record of crimes. That is the error of a self-important person [Wichtigtuer].
Those are the
words of the former SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. I have always been amazed by
the self-consciousness [Selbstbewusstsein]
of Helmut Schmidt.
Torsten Schneider (SPD): That worked once with Willi Brandt. This time, not, Frau colleague!
We need to
also place in the foreground the positive sides of our history so that people
can better identify themselves with this city and this country.
[to be continued; trans: tem]
