For months, the former CSU Justice Minister Winfried Bausback was considered the most promising successor to the outgoing Federal Constitutional Judge Peter Müller. Due to an agreement between government and opposition parties, the CSU has the right to propose the replacement and only has to coordinate with the CDU. But according to information from the German Press Agency, Bausback is suddenly out of the race. The reasons that reportedly spoke against him are politically sensitive.
On the one hand, there were fears in the CDU and CSU that Bausback would be biased because of his CSU party register in the upcoming lawsuit in Karlsruhe against the federal election law. After the Bundestag decided to reform the federal electoral law in June with the votes of the traffic light parties, the Free State of Bavaria and the CSU first filed a lawsuit against the reform in Karlsruhe. They complain that the law is unconstitutional because overhang and compensatory mandates as well as the so-called basic mandate clause have been eliminated in order to reduce the number of representatives.
Bausback’s dissertation from 1998 is also said to have increased reservations in the Union. In it he deals, of all things, with the constitutional limits of federal electoral law. Explosive: With a focus on the Left Party, Bausback comes to the conclusion that the basic mandate clause that the CSU demanded back in a lawsuit is at least constitutionally questionable. However, the removal of the basic mandate clause could mean that the CSU would win all direct mandates in Bavaria, but would slip below the five percent mark in the federal elections nationwide and would no longer be represented in the Bundestag. Bausback, who sits in the state parliament for the CSU, spoke on Wednesday of an honor “to have been chosen for such an outstanding office.” But this “doesn’t change the joy of continuing to work in politics.”
Since Müller actually resigned from his position at the end of September, time is of the essence. The Federal Constitutional Court Act sets time limits for the search for a successor. If the CDU and CSU needed longer than two months to find a successor who would receive the necessary two-thirds majority of votes in the Federal Council, they would lose their right to make proposals. The meeting of the state chamber on Friday is more or less their last chance. This year it will only meet in mid-December. There is now a lot to be said for the fact that it boils down to a candidate who is not in danger of getting into trouble because of bias as a CSU member. The best chances are given to a lawyer or a constitutional lawyer from Bavaria.