Katrin Ebner-Steiner, September 1, 2021, Corona Pandemic

Bavarian Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 18/91, pp. 12426-12428.

Frau President. Esteemed colleagues.

Herr Söder, as to your mud-slinging: I am neither a postman nor a string-puller. In contrast to you, I respect the opinion of free citizens.

On that account, I certainly want to say thank you to the many helpers in healthcare, in the schools and in the families. They are the defenders of our people, not the power elites and the politicians.

Today we deliberate in the Bavarian Landtag on the new Corona decree for which the Bavarian ministers council unanimously decided yesterday and announced in the surroundings of a press conference. Owing to the wide-ranging restrictions for the citizens, an open-ended debate in the Landtag with the participation of the people’s elected representatives would have been essential. Instead we however see, dear citizens, the Minister-president’s 18^th government declaration which is nothing other than an advertisement for Markus Söder with the friendly support of the Bavarian State broadcasting.

For a year and a half, this Minister-president governs with emergency decrees and makes the Bavarian Landtag into Bavaria’s biggest little theatre. As the AfD delegation’s chairman, I have obtained a deep insight into the political decision-making process. As a citizen of this State, I had expected the elected members of the parties to be included in the making of decisions. Instead, the Minister-president rules past the parliament and thereby disregards the parliamentary customs – quite according to his model, the yet Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. And she continually has made the essential decisions unilaterally and without appropriate participation of the Bundestag. Minister-president Söder has even recently praised this almost dictatorial governing style and copied it for Bavaria. Ladies and gentlemen, since the Corona situation at the latest, parliamentary government finds itself in a very serious crisis. This crisis was unleashed not by the critics of the Corona restrictions but by the State government under Söder. He repeatedly abuses the Bavarian Landtag as a stage for the announcement of the State government’s decisions and degrades to supernumeraries the large portion of the elected members.

Minister-president Söder shows himself to be not only un-teachable in relations with the parliament but also in connection with the challenges owing to the Corona virus. He grandiosely designates the announced new infection defense decree as a new chapter in the Corona policy. Restrictive of the basic rights, the Corona preventive measures were to be an expression of a new  balance of security and self-responsibility. In fact however, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, by means of the introduction of the 3-G rule, designated as the centerpiece, the thumb screws were further tightened for those not vaccinated; in Bavaria, that is still 40% – 40%! At the same time, you increase the direct pressure on the young people to let themselves be vaccinated. Since from October 1, Corona tests will no more be offered without cost. By means of an expensive PCR test, a disco visit becomes an unaffordable luxury. Herr Söder, you rob the joy of life from an entire generation. Yet let us state what the fact is: 3-G is nothing other than a covert forced vaccination, since what is left to the citizen who can fulfill no test? What does the old-age impoverished pensioner do who needs now take care to make ends meet? It is the perfect right of these people to say: Nein, I do not want to let myself be vaccinated.

Here it is unethical, improper, indeed it is completely unacceptable to continue to exercise pressure on these free people. That has nothing to do with the commended self-responsibility; but that is state repression in its most extreme form. You, Herr Söder, play off the vaccinated against the non-vaccinated. You thereby divide our society and you even designate it as a new form of freedom. Here, more scorn and meanness there is not.

In this regard, the Economy Minister and Deputy Minister-president Hubert Aiwanger thereby plays a quite shabby role. He is the man with two faces, the Janus head in the Söder government. At the cabinet table, he votes to the detriment of the vaccinated, at the reserved table he solicits the votes of the non-vaccinated for the Frei Wähler. The voters see through this game of the bloc party system and do not let themselves be sold for dumb. The citizens know that Aiwanger is only there so as to keep the oppositional votes in the bloc party system.

Herr Aiwanger, if you take freedom seriously, then finally do us a favor and quit this government of serfdom [Unfreiheit] and encroachment! End this unworthy show for Bavaria!

The new decree also foresees the introduction of a so-called hospital signal light. You thereby overtake a requisition which we of the AfD had from the beginning demanded as an indicator of the loading of the healthcare system. But what exactly happens to us citizens when the light is yellow or red? No one knows exactly what will then happen and you keep it vague.

Ladies and gentlemen, who should actually peer into all of these regulations? Such monstrous legal decrees are the expression of a policy hostile to freedom which no one understands.

In this connection, you also ever again bring into play the children. As a mama of four children, I can only say to you: It is shown, and it is a scientific consensus, that children are no vectors of infection, and an illness of children and youth runs exceedingly mild. Herr Söder, we of the AfD stand consistently on the side of the families. On that account, I demand of you here in the sovereign house: Hands off our children!

We of the AfD do not want that our children be required or be forced to vaccinate. We also do not want that here children be exposed to unnecessary health risks and that children need wear a mask at school, even though they will be continually tested. That is after all completely insane! We of the AfD want an authentic freedom to decide and we stand for proportionality. We are the guarantor of self-responsibility and thereby the only remaining advocate of an authentic freedom in this country.

We want no Söder’sche freedom, but we demand the end of these nonsensical and unrealistic preventive measures. Herr Söder, I am greatly concerned for Bavaria. Under your government, we Bavarians simply want our freedom back.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Katrin Ebner-Steiner, January 6, 2021, Bavaria and Vaccination

AfD Kompakt, January 6, 2021

Söder once again removes himself from the firing line of criticism and presents Melanie Huml as a sacrificial pawn.

Just as he had done in the summer in regards the testing failures when he then left Health Minister Huml to step alone in front of the cameras, he now leaves Huml to fall completely so as to push from himself the failures related to the grandly announced vaccinations.

The lack of orientation and planning of the State government which, like Merkel, knows no other way than to pursue the disproportionate and ineffective lockdown, shall be concealed with chess maneuvers of personnel.

The principal problem is not the helpless ministers in the focal Ministries like Health and Education, but an autocratic and power-obsessed Minister-president who, without a reasonable strategy and utterly detached from reality, leaves his Minister to march to the fight accompanied by failures and defeats.

Bavaria’s former leading role in Germany now under Söder suffers from faulty structures, obsolete technology and software, as well as unsynchronized procedures. This is truly an unworthy role for Bavaria.

The assumption of responsibility appears otherwise; since these present cosmetic interventions will alter nothing in the defective basic performance.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Katrin Ebner-Steiner, December 15, 2020, Pandemic

Bavarian Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 18/67, pp. 33-35.

Dear citizens, Herr President, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Herr Söder, we are the voice of the Bavarian citizens who have not been in agreement with your Corona policy.

Among these are many CSU members and voters who presently turn away from your party; since you in this pandemic have definitely lost control; control over a moderate analysis, control over the course of this so-called pandemic, control over reality. On that account, you now require a big diversionary manoeuvre: The second lockdown. It simulates resolution and an ability to act, at the same time it is primarily a testimony of a lack of planning and loss of control and even of helplessness.

You have squandered sums in the millions for senseless mass tests – money which would have been better expended on protection of at-risk groups. My grandmother of more than 90 years and all at-risk patients here in Bavaria wait at home for the pretentiously promised FFP2 masks.

            Thomas Kreuzer (CSU): Then drop one off, Frau Ebner-Steiner!

A greater part of those people simply do not live in old-age or care homes.These people were by you left alone at home with the risk of infection and, in the truest sense of the word, left behind. Not every grandmother and not every grandfather has a caring granddaughter; and we must also be there for them, Herr Kreuzer.

I know many women in the city and country who must survive on a pension of 450 euros. The average pension of women in Germany amounts to exactly 711 euros; with that, an FFP2 mask cannot be purchased every day. Many of these women have raised children; they have built this country; they deserve to be treated with respect.

Herr Söder, you speak of empathy and sympathy, yet your actions speak a different language. To this day, you have undertaken nothing to systematically and actually protect our seniors. You now stumble from one lockdown to the next, always of the same primitive design: Forbid, forbid and yet again forbid …Your entire Corona policy is based on the foundation of a dubious testing policy.

In the medical sense is to be distinguished between infection and colonization. Not every micro-organism detected by means of a PCR test also indicates an infection. I want to give you an example: In the human body there is a whole series of defensive barriers against micro-organisms, and only when these barriers are overcome, as in tonsillitis, is there an infection present. The PCR test alone is not proof of an infection. Exactly that is in the package insert of this test.

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, it is high time to scrutinize your Corona policy’s basis of decision and the preventative measures resulting therefrom.

Herr Söder, your ministers and members have recently shown in the Landtag restaurant what they think of your Corona preventative measures. Ministers Sibler and Schreyer sat with three other CSU members and thus five were at one table. That was an inexcusable violation of the contact limitations. You preach water and drink wine. That is political hypocrisy.

Dear esteemed Herr colleague Kreuzer, mind your own business, instead of continually thrashing the AfD. Do your household chores. As before, you give a wide berth to the making of a long-term strategy. Instead, you now completely confine us citizens. Reasonable, rational analysis is plainly not the State government’s thing. You lack every understanding of the countless livelihoods which you have annihilated, of the businesses which you drive to ruin. Here also I readily give you an example: My good friend of many years must at the end of the year give up her clothing store which she has run successfully for over 25 years. As a single mother with two children, she really has the test of a lifetime. Yet your preventative measures have irretrievably withdrawn from her the foundation of a lifetime.

It is thus so that not everyone can earn money with a face shield. The citizens’ discontent with the so-called Corona preventative measures is as great as never before, primarily amongst the young people. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds deny support to the government. The receipt you receive in the streets, since from this loss of reality follows the loss of the trust of we citizens. Herr Söder, before all, no one wants to listen to you. Your continual angst propaganda, your endurance talks; ever fewer citizens believe you.

Before all, you are afraid to tell the citizens the bare truth. You must say to them: Hitherto, the measures simply have not worked. The billions were uselessly wasted and many livelihoods were ruined – yet you prefer to further deceive the people. There was from the beginning one thing that ought to have been done; namely, to close the borders and to offer tests; yet for the migrants, the borders stood and stand wide open.

But I also must ask the other opposition parties: Why was our constructive proposal thrown out as a whole?

We had demanded an investigating committee, and primarily put forward the institution of a commission of inquest with proven experts. Bavaria would thereby be able to be made crisis-proof.

We risk much with your Corona and lockdown policy. It is about our economic future, our common life, our free society.

Here in parliament you squeeze the tear ducts and yourselves act cold as ice. After all the exertions of the last weeks and months, you now also destroy even the Christmas business which for some can amount up to 50% of a year’s revenues. For example, in the ski business. Herr Söder, you now also close the ski areas in an autocratic manner, because skiing is simply not beloved by Crown Prince Marcus. Now we roll into a gigantic wave of bankruptcy.

It is similarly bad in the hotel and restaurant business and in numerous other branches. Yet you set the crown on the whole; for from you the potent and patronizingly promised assistance does not at all arrive at the firms, or too late or not in sufficient quantity, as has been ascertained by the president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Gabriel Felbermayr. Small and mid-sized operations were sacrificed to your obtuseness and desire for recognition, and only a few global great concerns profit from your clear cutting policy, while many people in this country no more know how they shall continue financially. That is your sad balance, Herr Söder.

Allow the people to again do their work in a regime of sensible hygiene measures. Permit to retail trade, schools and kindergartens their regular operation again and finally re-open the hotels and restaurants. And before all: Immediately stop all planning which upsets the population and allows hasty vaccination, until the risks and side-effects of vaccination are known and the question of liability for vaccination damages is clarified! The people of Bavaria are not your test rabbits! It is here about people’s lives, and not about, by means of mass testing, diverting from the failures of the previous Corona policy.

May God protect the Bavarian citizens and our land.

 

[trans: tem]