Because of his controversial tweets on the day of the federal election, Free Voters boss and Vice Prime Minister Hubert Aiwanger does not have to reckon with proceedings for an administrative offense. According to a statement by a FW party spokesman on Tuesday evening, the Federal Returning Officer examined the case and decided that the tweet does not justify such fine proceedings.
Background: On election day, Aiwanger had distributed figures from an alleged post-election survey by the Elections Research Group on Twitter while voting was ongoing – combined with the call for the “last votes” to be given to his party. A few minutes later, the tweet was deleted again. In the communication from the FW it is now said that the election supervisor checked the origin of the figures published by Aiwanger and determined that they were “not numbers from a by-election survey”. The FW notification from Tuesday evening left open where the values came from.
The indignation after the tweet was great. Both in Aiwanger’s own party and in the CSU and the opposition in the state parliament. “An unbelievable case of election manipulation,” said CSU General Secretary Markus Blume. The SPD parliamentary group demanded Aiwanger’s dismissal as Minister of Economics. The minister himself apologized to the state parliament.
After the election supervisor’s decision, FW General Secretary Susann Enders said: “Hubert Aiwanger was wrongly suspected.” Now “those people who attacked Aiwanger should draw the consequences”.
Initially, nobody complies with this request in the face of political competition. Instead, FDP parliamentary group leader Martin Hagen asks on Twitter: “Inventing numbers and issuing them as exit polls in order to influence spontaneous people on election day, is it allowed?” Hagen calls the election supervisor’s verdict a “strange decision”. Christian Doleschal, head of the Junge Union, asks Twitter which numbers Aiwanger wanted to “influence the voters”. “Were they made up?” Aiwanger’s answer to Doleschal: “Only you can come up with this idea.”