Bernd Baumann, January 14, 2021, Elections

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/201, pp. 25619-25620.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

We stand at the beginning of a super election year: Six state legislature elections, one Bundestag election. Without announcement, the government delegations yesterday entered a motion for today’s debate. It comprehensively empowers the government: With a kind of emergency decree, it can intervene in all elections procedures in which the parties nominate their candidates for the Bundestag.

Elections are the heart of democracy. This proceeding today is an open heart operation. Yet we must speak on it sufficiently before declaring in the Bundestag such a democratic emergency.

We must debate this in committee. Remove this over-hasty motion from the daily order, ladies and gentlemen.

With the motion put forward today, such things as election by mail and digital voting suddenly return to the foreground. They are, as you know, subject to manipulation. No one can control who at home sends a letter or votes on a computer; at party meetings, that can be done by personal identification.

Even the director of Federal elections in principle views the expansion of election by mail critically: Verbatim: With election by mail there always remains “a residue of risk”. “An election,” he says verbatim, can “be held under pandemic conditions without problem and with adherence to all hygiene prescriptions.” That must also pertain to nominations assemblies.

            Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens): That is the topic?

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): That is certainly not the topic! 

You cannot thus over-night give such wide-ranging authority to the government and drive all that through the parliament – without prior announcement, without prior discussion, without consultation.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Have you read the motion?

            Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens): It is not pertinent!

That cannot be, ladies and gentlemen.

 There is also certainly no necessity.

The pandemic situation has not at all changed in recent hours. In Nordrhein-Westfalen, the AfD has already held over 30 nominations assemblies: With hygiene conditions, without problems – it works.

As members, we also gather together here in plenary session, physically on site; just so as in all committees of parliament. That should not be possible for party nominations assemblies? There is no reason to flog your plan so surprisingly through parliament. That cannot be, ladies and gentlemen. 

Before all, the Bundestag delegations have given themselves rules, as occurs in a daily order. The government delegations announced their motion submitted today – important and central to politics – yet not in the Ältestenrat. Nothing of it! Why not? You have announced nothing of the matter in the round of first parliamentary floor leaders. The day before yesterday, on Tuesday: Not a word! Why not? That is what we are objecting to. That is the problem here, ladies and gentlemen.  

Where does the pressure come from? Does it come from the Chancellor’s office? What is the calculation behind it? We must speak of all of this, before we empower the government with sweeping legal decrees. Take this motion from the daily order.

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Man, man, man.

            Josephine Ortleb (SPD): What’s with the mask?

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

           

           

 

Gottfried Curio, January 14, 2021, Democracy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/204, pp. 25686-25687.

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

All illegalities concerning the proceedings at the Capitol ought to be strictly punished. Political argument is to be conducted exclusively with peaceful, democratic means. Yet what a show! In the U.S.A. a demonstration escalates, and in Germany one hastens to state that here a similar mob agitates. Good, we in Germany plainly had no comparable occurrence, for instance in front of the Reichstag. While at the Capitol a heap raged for hours, here within a few of minutes the troop proceeded to its selfies on the steps – no break-ins, no injuries, three police officers having sufficed. Yet a shamelessly false comparison is drawn so as to incite with horror pictures the German populace against critics of the government policy.  

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): You are nevertheless the instigator!

That is hate, that is incitement against a democratic opposition minority.

Why were critics of the government vilified? Henceforth, when they are placed almost beyond the pale of opinion and it is desired to ostracize them, it is to thereby show that with the critics, perhaps of excessive lockdown preventative measures,

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): The AfD as victim!

there is not need to argue, since they in any case are thought criminals. The government wants nothing more than that the opposition radicalizes. Where that fails to appear, it is simply to be fantasized, like the Bavarian Word Rambo with his Corona RAF; since the opposition is no more to be met with the power of better arguments – where the ice would be thin – but one can style oneself as a force for order against law-breakers. Who is thus a driver of social division, who a provocateur of hysteria? It is the government itself which continually presents its requirements as being without alternative and ostracizes those who think otherwise.

Should Trump be a bad loser, what would it then be for Germany, where a Chancellor declares an election result unpardonable and announces it ought to be rescinded? Who here has a distorted relation with democracy, ladies and gentlemen?

            Agnieszka Brugger (Greens): You!

And in regards defense of the constitution, how is it to be considered when, according to the former chief of an authority subordinate to the government, there is political pressure to unconditionally observe a specific party, when a press conference is held which was subsequently categorized as unlawful? Must the Constitution Defense itself perhaps be observed?

Yes, democracy in Germany is in danger. Following an AfD complaint, many state constitutional courts must stop the unconstitutional parity law, against the wishes of its supporters Giffey, Barley, Lambrecht, Widmann-Munz. The Federal Constitutional Court recognized, quite in the sense of the AfD, that the illegal financing of states by means of the ECB’s loan purchases was unconstitutional. Democracy, which lives on freedom of speech, is also in danger when even the use of a single word shall be sanctioned – Volk, Nation – and when anyone is not of the government line, the same endangers unity, even though difference of opinion and the dispute over means are still the way of democracy.

Increasingly will divergent opinions be punished with social proscription, media vilification and loss of job. Who does not play along with the government’s reconstruction plans for this country will be attacked, blocked, cancelled. Even the apolitical area will be brought into line, from the writer to the cabaretist. According to a survey, a majority of Germans prefer to hold back their own opinion instead of saying openly what one thinks. Since what disturbs will be clarified as a non-opinion, declared to be hate, removed from the protection of basic rights.           

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): The AfD styles itself as victim! Mein Gott!

An official truth is laid down by which doubt is named incitement and conspiracy so that even opinions will be forbidden.

The actual assault on democracy is the instrumentalization of the excesses at the Capitol so as to establish a widespread censorship. The cancellation orgies on the internet daily drum up a march to digital totalitarianism. It is desired to bring all critics to silence – a book-burning on a gigantic scale, ladies and gentlemen.

Timon Gremmels (SPD): That is no historical comparison! Book-burning? Take that back! Unbelievable!

The state of law is thereby endangered by those who command striking violations of the basic rights without actually weighing the suitability. Those endanger democracy who think the populace can be deceived, on which can even be palmed off a liability and financial union by the opportune means of a health crisis

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): The comparison with 1933 is false!

or the robbery of a three-figure sum of billions by means of a supposed reconstruction fund.

Variety of opinion is still a prerequisite of democracy. Yet politics and media will not justify the order to overhaul every expert voice, to deconstruct all opinions. Instead there is a one-page, uniquely valid requirement – ARD and ZDF as vaccine centers for the Ministry of Truth.

If anyone in Germany endangers democracy, then it is a government which issues its actions as being without alternative, which withdraws itself from debate and which from the outset wishes to discredit all opposing voices. Therefore, the Alternative für Deutschland is most certainly a defense of democracy in Germany.

I thank you.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bernd Gögel, Freight Transportation, January 14, 2021

AfD Kompakt, January 14, 2021 

The new Corona entry decree for freight transport is unsuitable and not at all thought through. Who enters Germany from an area at risk must report his arrival each time to come, and within 48 hours – for every infection situation in a neighboring country even to the moment of entry – prove that he is not infected with Corona. For a now already overburdened healthcare system with day-long waiting times, it is however utterly unclear how the required test and proof duties shall in a brief period be fulfilled. To inland navigation accrue difficult trips in foreign waters which will be interrupted simply for the transfer of goods. If however the transport personnel will now be denied entry due to a lack of Corona test results, and foreign ship’s crew can no more enter Germany, not only does the raw material supply of industry threaten to stop, but the consumer goods of daily needs may become in short supply.

Should the transport personnel clear these hurdles, then there is the total meltdown of supply. Not only will inland navigation, port industry and many other parts of the transportation economy be endangered and their basis be withdrawn, but serious damage will also be inflicted on Germany as an economic site. I therefore support the inland navigation and ports branches in their demand to the Federal government to create comprehensive and unrestricted emergency regulations for the transportation sector so that the ever again publicized free movement of commodities and goods traffic in Europe remains preserved. Otherwise, it is only a question of days when the hoarding [Hamsterkäufe] begins.

 

[trans: tem]