At the CDU, a membership decision to determine the successor of Armin Laschet as party leader is emerging. The district chairmen’s conference in Berlin on Saturday voted with an overwhelming majority for this proposal, as a party spokesman confirmed. According to participants, Laschet received a lot of applause for his demand that all candidates at the federal party conference should then accept the result of the member survey.
The CDU had invited its 326 district and 27 district chairmen to Berlin to work through the historically poor result of the federal election of 24.1 percent and to discuss the procedure for electing the new party leadership. The conference itself was only able to obtain a picture of its opinion and not make any binding decisions. These are to be met on Tuesday at special meetings of the Presidium and the Federal Board. According to current law, the party chairman must be elected by a party congress. Even before the start of the conference, the call for greater involvement of the members in this decision had been loud.
At the conference hotel, members of the Junge Union unfurled a banner that read “CDU membership decision now!”. Lower Saxony’s CDU chairman Bernd Althusmann said: “If there is a controversial personnel decision for the CDU federal chairman or the federal chairman, a member survey is very useful from my point of view.” The CDU should “use the membership instrument much more”.