Ludwig Hartmann actually came to the state parliament restaurant to talk about water. When it comes to water, and climate protection in general, CSU leader Markus Söder is “in the sleeping car,” said the Greens parliamentary group leader on Monday. Renaturing rivers, doubling the number of water protection areas, quickly introducing a water abstraction fee, these are Hartmann’s demands. But there is also this other topic that everyone is still talking about: electoral reform. And there is the question of whether the Berlin Greens will, well, undermine the Bavarian Greens in the state election year.
Is Hartmann angry about his own federal party? “There are a number of tasks that could have been tackled more quickly,” he says, referring to the electoral reform. One can possibly translate it like this: “Times of rule, why couldn’t the federal government at least wait with its reform until after of the state elections!” The reform initiated by the Greens, SPD and FDP envisages, among other things, that the CSU could win all 46 direct mandates in a federal election in the future – and still not be represented in parliament if it reached the five percent hurdle overall fails.”They try to shake the existence of the CSU and thus make Bavaria weaker or even silenced. The new electoral law weakens all of Bavaria and not just the CSU,” says Markus Söder.
What the CSU boss complains about is only superficially directed against the federal government. Söder’s bold thesis that the electoral law reform is weakening “all of Bavaria” is primarily aimed at the SPD, Greens and FDP in the Free State. Söder has long drawn the picture that the Bavarian traffic light parties are almost externally controlled by a federal government hostile to Bavaria. Against this background, it is not surprising that the Bavarian Greens remained strangely silent after the electoral reform was passed. You know Söder and knew that he would use the reform against you. And they probably suspected that the reform in Bavaria was also eroding the sense of justice among those people who were critical of the CSU. Nobody says it openly, but the Bavarian Greens are very angry with the federal party.
There are also voices in the ranks of the SPD state parliamentary group who are bothered by the fact that the federal SPD supported an electoral law reform to the detriment of the CSU – but apparently did not have an eye on the consequences for their own people in Bavaria, where the CSU opposed the traffic light parties will now all the more assume that they don’t care about Bavarian interests, and that in the middle of the election campaign. “Unpleasant,” says someone from the SPD parliamentary group, the comrades in the federal government should have discussed the deletion of the basic mandate clause with the Bavarian SPD beforehand.
Oh what, says Florian von Brunn, state and parliamentary group leader of the SPD Bavaria. He sees “no problem” for the election campaign. Just “a debate that politicians and journalists have”. People think it’s “good that the Bundestag is being downsized”. Of course, Greens faction leader Hartmann also thinks the latter. And Martin Hagen, parliamentary group leader of the FDP. However, Hagen judged the deletion of the basic mandate clause differently before the Bundestag removed it. “The fact that all CSU deputies are kicked out of parliament despite majorities in their respective constituencies,” he said, “would contradict the will of the Bavarian voters.” You can also see this as a maneuver with which Hagen wants to get his party out of the corner of the anti-Bayern parties, in which Söder also likes to put the FDP.
The fact that the traffic light parties are now repeatedly making suggestions to improve the electoral law leaves CSU boss Söder cold. He calls for the reform to be scrapped completely, otherwise his party will sue. It seems that Söder will not give back the campaign gift.