Bavaria: FDP issues state government with a “pathetic balance sheet” – Bavaria

With sharp attacks on the state government and calls for reforms in education and economic policy, FDP state leader Martin Hagen has committed his party to a committed election campaign. Just under seven months before the state elections, he accused the CSU and Free Voters of a “pathetic record” and campaigned for the FDP as a “reform party” that wanted to break up incrustations.

In no area is Bavaria doing better today than when the state government took office five years ago, on the contrary, Hagen said on Saturday at a state party conference in Ingolstadt. The shortage of teachers, the lack of daycare places, the shortage of skilled workers, the lack of affordable housing – everything has gotten worse in recent years. “Bavaria has been governed undervalue in the last five years,” he criticized. The government of the CSU and Free Voters is the worst government in post-war history.

Specifically, Hagen promised reforms in education policy, but also a relaxation of the strict shop closing time law. In Bavaria, shops still have to close at 8 p.m. – that’s no longer up to date, he promised that they want to change that. “Its Time.” In school politics, he complained, looking at Minister of Education Michael Piazolo (free voters), that the past five years have been under the motto “bankruptcies, bad luck and Piazolo”.

Hagen swore his party to a committed election campaign until the October 8 election date. “I am convinced that the best is ahead of us – for our FDP and also for our country,” he called into the hall. According to current surveys, the FDP has to worry, as in 2018, about making it into the Maximilianeum at all. Most recently, the liberals were bobbing between three and five percent – in 2018 they only just managed to get in with 5.1 percent.

In its election program, which was debated in Ingolstadt, the party relies on “classic FDP issues” with demands for more personal responsibility and liberalization. In terms of content, however, the draft summarized many well-known demands. These include the introduction of the right to vote from the age of 16 in state elections, the reduction of the size of the state parliament, the abolition of the minimum age of 40 for prime ministers and the separation of church and state.

The list of demands also included many points that are explicitly directed against the CSU – such as the abolition of the Bavarian border police and the repeal of the so-called Kreuzerlass. In education policy, according to the passage passed in Ingolstadt, the FDP calls for the start of classes in Bavarian schools to be postponed to nine o’clock more easily, and for the introduction of cross-denominational “dialogue classes on questions of religion and worldview”. For children from the age of five, the FDP calls for nationwide and, if necessary, compulsory preliminary courses in German. For children under the age of five there is a need for a “voluntary but nationwide offer of parent-child German courses”.

Prime Minister Markus Söder himself entered the direct election campaign with the FDP on Twitter at the weekend: Hagen accused Söder of being too happy to deal with gender language and “insect eating” in current appearances instead of tackling the real problems of the country. Söder, on the other hand, wrote on Twitter: “The most important demand of the FDP is that school starts at 9 a.m. Are there any other problems?” And: “Unfortunately, the FDP has become a left-wing party. And there is no need for another left-wing party in the Bavarian state parliament.”

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