Hendrik Wüst has been Minister of Transport in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2017.
(Photo: dpa)
Bielefeld After the federal election defeat, the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia set the course for the state elections in May next year. The CDU federal chairman and previous chancellor candidate Armin Laschet admitted mistakes in the election campaign in his farewell speech as NRW party leader and prime minister at a state party conference.
“In fact, I made mistakes and took responsibility for this result,” said Laschet at the meeting on Saturday in Bielefeld. The decisive factor for the outcome, however, was the question of unity. And here, according to a survey, the SPD looked significantly better than the Union.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, however, the situation is different, Laschet called to the more than 600 delegates. “Maintain this unity,” said Laschet and received a standing ovation for around five minutes after the end of his speech. Other speakers also complained about deficiencies in team play.
The mayor of Bielefeld, Andreas Rüther, criticized the Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU leader Markus Söder. The assessment that with Söder the Union would have won the election is wrong. “I say we lost the election because of Söder.”
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The delegates elected NRW Transport Minister Hendrik Wüst as the new head of the CDU regional association with the largest number of members. With 645 of 656 votes, he achieved a result of 98.3 percent. The CDU wants the 46-year-old to be elected as Laschet’s successor as prime minister in the state parliament on Wednesday next week.
Laschet resigns from the Prime Minister’s office
Laschet had announced that he would resign from the office of Prime Minister by accepting his mandate in the Bundestag on Tuesday (October 26). Wüst has been Minister of Transport in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2017. Since 2013, the Münsterländer has also been chairman of the CDU / CSU’s SME and Economic Union in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The lawyer and passionate hunter was Secretary General of the NRW CDU from 2006 to 2010, but had to resign when it became known that the CDU had offered potential party donors one-on-one talks with one of Laschet’s predecessors, Jürgen Rüttgers. Before the election in May, Wüst now has around six months to distinguish himself in the new office.
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