Teamwork is required
No more “draft horse”: Junge Union removes Söder’s name from explanation
The Junge Union had Markus Söder deleted from a statement. Actually, the CSU boss was there as a “draft horse”. There is no longer any question of this in the new version.
Two weeks after the lost federal election, CSU leader Markus Söder is blowing a gentle headwind in his own party. At the national assembly of the Junge Union at the weekend, the delegates voted by a large majority to delete Söder’s name from a passage in the declaration that the JU regional executive had drafted to deal with the defeat in the federal election. The reason for the symbolic vote were reservations that Söder had become the dominant figure in his party. Teamwork and not a one-man show is necessary, said delegate Stefan Meitinger, who brought in the motion to delete Söder’s name with applause.
“It is time (…) to form a powerful, fresh team behind our strong workhorse Markus Söder, which credibly covers the entire spectrum of a people’s party”, it said in the original draft. In the version that was finally adopted, the “draft horse Markus Söder” was missing, only the “fresh team” remained. The meeting leadership had tried to defuse the vote and submit a compromise proposal, but was not heard. “No,” rang out the hall. The vote does not mean an uprising against Söder. The 300 or so JU delegates applauded Söder’s speech beforehand.
Markus Söder tied the electoral failure to Armin Laschet
The CSU boss attributes the bad result of the Union to the unpopular candidate for Chancellor Armin Laschet (CDU) and a weak campaign strategy. “It’s just like that: in the end, the Germans wanted a different candidate for chancellor than the one that the CDU and CSU have put up,” said Söder, who would have liked to become a candidate for chancellor himself. “Just as it played a role that we weren’t quite sure from the start which strategy we were actually pursuing in terms of content.”