The FDP completes its personnel table. Party leader Christian Lindner will propose Bijan Djir-Sarai, member of the Bundestag, as the new general secretary to the liberal committees this Monday. This was confirmed by party circles Süddeutsche Zeitungafter first the Picture on sunday had reported about it. The appointment had become necessary because Volker Wissing, who had only taken over the post from the hapless Linda Teuteberg in August 2020, moved to the cabinet of the Ampel coalition as Federal Minister for Transport and Digital.
The election is surprising, because the 45-year-old Djir-Sarai, like Lindner himself and the First Parliamentary Managing Director of the Liberals, Johannes Vogel, comes from the state association of North Rhine-Westphalia, which is overrepresented in the top offices. In addition, the most important party office after the chairman, according to Lindner’s will, also goes to a man. Even in the ministerial ranks of the FDP and also in the leadership positions in the parliamentary group and the federal party, women are rarely represented. In addition, Djir-Sarai, as the foreign policy spokesman for the Bundestag faction, has so far attracted less aggressiveness, but rather as the chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia regional group who is looking to compensate.
Djir-Sarai came to Germany from Iran when he was eleven
Lindner’s personnel proposal can be seen as an attempt to open up new groups of voters for the Free Democrats and to position the party independently in relation to the traffic light coalition in Berlin. Djir-Sarai was born in Tehran; When he was eleven, his parents sent him from Iran to an uncle living in Grevenbroich so that he could get a good education. He bit his way through high school and studied business administration. At 18 he joined the FDP. With his career he embodies the promise of education and advancement to which the liberals attach great importance. At the same time, the party, which advocates a liberal immigration law, signals that it is open to people with a migration background.
Djir-Sarai, who lives with his family in Grevenbroich to this day, is also one of the more middle-class, conservative liberals. While his predecessor Wissing acted as a bridge builder to the Greens and Social Democrats with his participation in the traffic light government of SPD Prime Minister Malu Dreyer in Rhineland-Palatinate, Djir-Sarai is apparently supposed to keep the FDP compatible with the Union parties. In Schleswig-Holstein, where state elections are due on May 8, the FDP governs in a Jamaica alliance with the Greens and the CDU, in North Rhine-Westphalia, where a new state parliament will be elected a week later, in a black-yellow coalition.