Things are currently going well for the Free Voters in Bavaria; according to the current BR Bavaria trend, they have 17 percent approval among the population and would therefore be the second strongest force in the country for the first time. Running becomes difficult because of all the strength and now FW boss Hubert Aiwanger has given the Prime Minister an interview about what he can prepare for. “Now just wait for the election,” said Aiwanger Augsburg General, “but agriculture is very important to us.” This can be interpreted as a declaration of war, namely one about the Ministry of Agriculture.
That sounds self-confident and is not the most remarkable thing about the interview, which also mentions the inflammatory leaflet that was found in Aiwanger’s school bag when he was at school. The economics minister probably didn’t like the questions afterwards, so they were simply deleted from the authorization process. It is common practice to present a verbatim interview to the respondent again so that he or she can perhaps smooth out answers that were quickly given. However, there are no plans to intervene in the questions or even delete them.
So that printed Augsburger Allgemeine the four questions about the leaflet affair – without an answer. For example: “What surprised us is that you can’t remember so many things, even though it was such a drastic experience in your youth. When a school principal stands up in front of you to lecture you, you know it still.”
Aiwanger is already answering other questions, such as what he would demand if the result were 17 percent. So he would like to have the Ministry of Agriculture for his free voters, he behaves like a secondary agriculture minister anyway. Whether wolf shooting or tethering, forest, manure, cow dung, by the time the Chief Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber takes a look, Aiwanger has already made his opinion known. He doesn’t care about jurisdiction.
The minister for cow dung and farmers’ souls is really getting on the nerves of his CSU colleagues. And the Ministry of Agriculture in particular does not want to give up Markus Söder, as he emphasized in July at the CSU district meeting in Upper Palatinate. If the CSU and the Free Voters get together again after the state elections, which both sides have assured despite the leaflet affair, the coalition negotiations will be less harmonious this time than they were five years ago.
At least no one now has to pretend that what unites the alliance partners is more than pragmatism to maintain power. What the relationship between Söder and Aiwanger really is like was answered in the interview: “We have never been one heart and one soul, but we work together in the interests of Bavaria.”