After the new Senate’s false start, it is difficult not to despair of Berlin’s political class. The level of irresponsibility demonstrated here is breathtaking. It doesn’t matter whether it was actually votes from the AfD faction that got Kai Wegner into the office of governing mayor.
Even if all 86 members of the coalition actually voted unanimously for the CDU chairman in the third ballot of the secret ballot, which both factions doubt, the flaw in this new Senate is that only the possibility of such disgrace was suitable for to discipline the insidious refusers in their own ranks. And that means: The executives of the CDU and SPD have failed.
This is embarrassing for both parties, but disastrous for Berlin. What the city really needs now is a strong government that puts an end to organized incompetence. What she does get, however, is a Senate that can only tentatively move about in the remaining three years until the next election campaign, so as not to further irritate the coalition factions that support her. In other words: political deadlock is to be feared.
The fact that either the votes or the fear of the AfD was needed to get the black-red Senate into office is a destructive vote of no confidence from both factions in the new governing mayor Kai Wegner and the two SPD chairmen Franziska Giffey and Raed Saleh understand. The reasons for this are various and lie deeper than it appears.
A sometimes brutal settlement among themselves
The SPD is now taking revenge on the fact that the reasons for the decade-long decline, which has been well documented by the elections of recent years, have never really been worked through. The fact that the party was able to save itself in ever new government coalitions with changing partners, despite the increasingly poor results of its policies and consequently also increasingly poor results in elections, favored the ongoing self-deception – and a breathtaking arrogance, the provisional climax of which was reached when Franziska Giffey after the signing of the coalition agreement with the CDU said: “I think now it’s time for Berlin to need me.”
In fact, however, Giffey needed the CDU: the alliance with Wegner was her only chance to remain in a leading position as things stood.
The weeks of the basic vote have shown how strong the anger about this is. It wasn’t the exemplary democratic debate that the SPD leadership portrays it as, but rather a sometimes brutal settling of accounts with one another – and with Raed Saleh’s personnel policy.
The long-standing parliamentary group leader and state chairman has systematically ensured that important posts in the Senate and at State Secretary level are not awarded based on qualifications, but on the basis of good will to secure one’s own power. He will not tolerate contradiction. The consequences are doubly fatal: for his party, but also for the city. In exceptional cases, such a system can also produce top executives, but it is characterized by self-satisfied, conflict-averse mediocrity from within its own closed ranks.
Kai Wegner also stood for this type of personnel policy for a long time. But at the moment of taking power, a completely different picture emerges: the list of members of the Berlin CDU looks as if it had been drawn up by the federal party in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus. They still have to show whether those selected are really good or even better; but the will to do things a little differently than has been usual in Berlin is clearly recognizable.
However, the price for this was high: among those from the CDU who denied Wegner their vote in the first ballot, there were those who were personally disappointed. The new Governing Mayor failed to involve them in the process in good time. That wasn’t his only fault, however.
Wegner fell into the trap of the SPD. The declared turn towards the CDU right in the middle of the exploratory talks was perhaps Raed Saleh’s last tactical masterpiece: the Social Democrats offered themselves to Wegner as willing, uncomplicated stewards; In fact, however, the CDU was only the lifeboat for its leadership – the team should see where it is. Now the whole boat is bobbing aimlessly through the city.
The black-red coalition had promised “the best for Berlin”. After the first day, it looks as if Berlin deserves better than a Senate that cannot be sure of the support of the parties supporting it. The city would have needed a government that is strong and united enough to overcome inertia at all levels and in all parties and to first create the conditions for decisions to be made and then actually implemented.
“Who should do it better than me?” said one of the not modest but outgoing senators. But that’s exactly what it has to be about now: Who can do it better?
