Bundestag
Merz accuses Ampel of renewed manipulation of voting rights
CDU federal chairman Friedrich Merz speaks at a press statement before the start of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group meeting. photo
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
This Thursday, the traffic light factions of the SPD, Greens and FDP want to vote in the Bundestag on a further change to the electoral law. The Union faction warns of damage to democracy.
Union faction leader Friedrich Merz has accused the traffic light factions of further manipulation of electoral law. According to the traffic light plans, Saxony-Anhalt should lose a constituency and Bavaria should gain a constituency, said the CDU chairman before a meeting of CDU/CSU MPs Bundestag in Berlin. The changes, which are to be voted on in the plenary session this Thursday, mean that Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) “can keep her constituency in the city of Augsburg in the next federal election,” said Merz.
“It’s a relatively small change, but it’s a big one,” said Merz. “With this change to the federal electoral law this week, the right to vote is once again being manipulated and serious damage is once again being done to our country’s democracy, he added. The coalition has not found it necessary to reach agreement with the Bavarian state government on this. “On the contrary : Once again she decides alone, once again without any consultation with the affected federal state.
Politics like in the USA?
According to Merz, the planned changes are intended to ensure that the Augsburg-Stadt constituency “doesn’t have too many CSU voters.” He criticized that such “manipulations of the electoral law are the great damage to our democracy.” The SPD, Greens and FDP are making similar changes to those in politics in the USA for 30 years. These led to “democracy in America no longer functioning properly.” The Union parliamentary group, among others, is currently suing in Karlsruhe against the new federal election law passed by the traffic light in June against the resistance of the Union and the Left Party.
CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt called it the “peak of audacity when one tries, as obviously as the traffic light does here, to create a new constituency for the benefit of individual MPs.” Ultimately, contrary to any technical considerations, it is all about “maintaining the power of the traffic light”. Dobrindt added: “This is deeply reprehensible.”
The draft law by the traffic light factions of the SPD, Greens and FDP provides, among other things, for the redistribution of a constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, as the previous distribution of constituencies among the states no longer corresponds to their share of the population. In Bavaria, an additional constituency is to be formed from parts of the previous constituencies of Augsburg-Land, Neu-Ulm and Ostallgäu.