The debate is half an hour young when Ilse Aigner asks for silence for the first time. After three quarters of an hour, the President of the State Parliament rings the bell. She interrupts Katharina Schulze, who is currently talking about Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters) and his speech last Saturday in Erding at the anti-heating demonstration, 13,000 people. The appearance was “the textbook description of a pure right-wing populist and intellectual arsonist,” said the Greens – and called for Aiwanger’s dismissal. Unrest in the room, outrage, heckling, it’s the sound of this afternoon session, on all sides. When Schulze is finished, there is a request to speak from the AfD. Why should Aiwanger “resign if he’ll give a sensible speech in four years’ time?” asks Gerd Mannes. You can see how happy he is with the question.
It’s mid-June, four months until the state elections. But this Wednesday in the state parliament you get a feeling of where the election campaign is going. It was actually supposed to be about specialist politics, about the government declaration by Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger, entitled: “Securing prosperity through a strong economy”. But there is more at stake now. About red lines, about firewalls, and last but not least about Aiwanger’s job, at least for the Greens, who want to persuade Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) to fire the minister with an emergency motion.
And Aiwanger? Approach the lectern in a traditional jacket and without a manuscript, as always. He praises his record as a minister, as always, the support for the chemical industry, the butchers. As always, he criticizes the federal government for its “economic policy sins”, above all the heating law, whose criticism is already the official summer hit of the CSU and FW. Everything as always? Was what?
Oh what, a “storm in a teacup”, says FW managing director Fabian Mehring about the horror that his boss unleashed in Erding, with the sentence that people had to “take back democracy”. Therefore, demanding Aiwanger’s ejection is a “manoeuvre” by the Greens to distract from the “total failure of the traffic lights at the federal level”. For Mehring, his boss only called “a real democratic deficit” because the majority of citizens are against the heating law. The FW is about freeing people “from the clutches of political pied pipers and bringing them back into the political center”.
Aiwanger, the freedom fighter, the firewall incarnate against the right? You have to be so uninhibited first. It is the reversal of what Aiwanger says, from left to right, even in the AfD they are now realizing that he speaks like one of them. Uli Henkel (AfD) said in the plenum that Aiwanger sounded “like a very committed AfD minister” in his style in Erding. An application for admission will be submitted to him. The coalition partner, the CSU, had also criticized Aiwanger. Head of the State Chancellery Florian Herrmann (CSU) already on Monday attested to an “inappropriate” choice of words and reminded him of the responsibility of his office. On Wednesday in the state parliament, the CSU and FW will come together again. After the government statement, they demonstratively clap for Aiwanger for a long time, not only his people, but also the CSU ministers.
After the government statement, the CSU speakers, Walter Nussel and Steffen Vogel, only talked about economic policy. Not a word to Erding. Late in the evening, during the debate on the Greens’ application for dismissal, Vice-Chairman Tobias Reiß then said that Söder in Erding had “clearly differentiated himself” from “the enemies of democracy” – and that he “also from other members of the state government ” expect. Otherwise, Reiß uses his speaking time to accuse the Greens of having been at demonstrations with “violent left-wing extremists”, for example against the law on police duties. In Erding, “protest from the middle of society” and from “concerned citizens” were also shown.
Florian von Brunn (SPD) accuses Aiwanger of damaging Bavaria’s and Germany’s reputation in the world with his “primitive and boorish demeanor” and is therefore not a reliable contact for entrepreneurs in the state. Even the Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko serves as a comparison for the SPD parliamentary group leader when it comes to Aiwanger. FW faction leader Florian Streibl says: “If you are placed from the left to the right corner and from the right to the left, you know you are in the bourgeois center.” His faction looks at Aiwanger “with pride” – he has led the Free State through economically difficult years, while in Berlin “the ship of fools is sailing with full sails”.
What this Wednesday still reveals: The Greens now have an election campaign motive that they were desperately looking for before the Erdinger demo. A few months ago, for example, they wanted to stylize the state elections as a “referendum on Bavaria’s energy future” – it didn’t work out that way. But now Katharina Schulze has declared the Bavarian election to be a vote on “our democracy”. In Erding, Aiwanger served “conspiracy ideologues, enemies of the constitution and lateral thinkers”, reminded of Donald Trump and ex-AfD boss Alexander Gauland. A “bug on populists and racists”. But, “even today, no word of apology,” says Schulze in the state parliament. For them, Prime Minister Söder is on the train, who also took part in the demo in Erding and was criticized for it. Söder “cannot allow” a member of the government to cross “red lines”, hence the call for dismissal.
Your sentence about Aiwanger as a “spiritual arsonist” may have an aftermath. The bureau of the House wants to examine the wording to see whether it is acceptable or worthy of criticism. The fact that the green application for dismissal is only scheduled around midnight, many hours after the government statement, has to do with the fact that plenary sessions shortly before the end of an electoral period are packed to the max. In the end, around 10:30 p.m., the CSU and Free Voters reject the Greens’ motion, despite the recent crisis in the coalition. The FDP and AfD also vote against it.
The prime minister’s chair remains empty during Aiwanger’s statement, again. It is said from cabinet circles that he had given Aiwanger his opinion on Tuesday after the meeting. Martin Hagen (FDP) interprets the absence differently: It is probably Söder’s “signal” that one does not have to have any expectations of the balance sheet of this Minister of Economics.