From left to right: Helge Braun, Norbert Röttgen and Friedrich Merz.
(Photo: REUTERS)
Berlin The CDU has chosen a new chairman: 62.1 percent of the CDU members voted in favor of Friedrich Merz as the new party leader. Because the 66-year-old got more than 50 percent of the votes in the first ballot, a second ballot is not necessary.
The other two applicants received significantly fewer votes. 25.8 percent of the members spoke out in favor of Norbert Röttgen, and 12.1 percent for Helge Braun. The turnout was 66.02 percent. At a party conference in January, Merz is to be officially elected as the new party leader.
In the third attempt it worked for Merz after he had failed twice within two years with a candidacy for the party chairmanship. In 2018 he just lost to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, at the beginning of the year he had to let Armin Laschet go first. Merz ‘predecessors were elected by delegates at party congresses. Now the members had the floor.
After the victory in the membership decision, the big question is whether Merz will also reach for the parliamentary group chairmanship in the Bundestag. Even before the result was certain, a debate had begun about whether Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus should vacate his post for the new party leader. Brinkhaus would like to continue his office beyond April – until then he will be elected for the time being. Röttgen and Braun had made it clear that they were not aiming for the parliamentary group chairmanship.
Although Merz has not yet officially made a claim to the chief post in the parliamentary group, it is not unlikely that he will do so.
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Merz had told the Funke media group: “That the chairmanship of the CDU and the leadership of the Union parliamentary group should be in one hand is a principle that applies.”
When asked whether Brinkhaus could look for a new job if he was elected party leader, Merz added: “I’m really not thinking about this topic at the moment. This question is currently not on the agenda. “At the same time he emphasized:” Ralph Brinkhaus and I get along well. “
The postal voting documents of the membership decision have been counted for a long time. Otherwise the CDU would not have been able to present the final result so quickly on Friday. If you wanted, say veteran CDU employees, you could see the height of the postal ballot stacks of the voters of Norbert Röttgen, Helge Braun and Friedrich Merz in a room in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, the CDU party headquarters.
The stack for Merz was quickly by far the highest.
Candidates knew a quarter of an hour before the result
Until then, nothing was known about the result of the online voting. The candidates themselves only found out a quarter of an hour beforehand what CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak announced on Friday at 2 p.m.
According to the CDU, almost two thirds of the 400,000 members took part in the survey on Thursday. According to information from the CDU, exactly 248,360 members took part – 64.3 percent of all party book owners.
The CDU wrote on Twitter that 132,617 members had cast an online vote (53.4 percent), 115,743 members voted by letter (46.6 percent). The party thanked them on Twitter:
Merz returned to the political stage in 2018 after a long break. In September 2002 Merz had resigned the parliamentary group chairmanship in favor of the CDU party leader Angela Merkel. Merkel had announced shortly beforehand that she would run for this office. Opposition work, so their argument, should be bundled in the party and parliamentary group chairmanship.
Merz was then deputy parliamentary group chairman for a while before he retired from politics and switched to business in 2009. Among other things, Merz was chairman of the supervisory board of asset manager Blackrock.
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