Nuremberg With sharp attacks, especially on the SPD and a demonstrative commitment to Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, the CSU wants to defend the Chancellery in the final sprint before the federal election. “We stand 100 percent behind our common candidate for chancellor and want to see Armin Laschet in the chancellery,” said CSU boss Markus Söder on Friday at a CSU party conference in Nuremberg.
The polls for the CSU and for the Union are not sufficient. But he called on the SPD and the Greens not to be too sure of victory. “We’ll catch you in the last few meters,” he said. The goal is: “Save Germany from the left.” He demanded a clear rejection of a traffic light coalition from the FDP.
Söder was confirmed in his office as party chairman for another two years by the delegates with 87.6 percent of the vote. He landed just above the result of 87.4 percent in his first election at the beginning of 2019, but fell short of the result when he was re-elected in October 2019 – at that time it was 91.3 percent.
“We want Armin Laschet as chancellor instead of Olaf Scholz or Annalena Baerbock,” said Söder and promised maximum unity between the sister parties CSU and CDU in the last two weeks of the election campaign. “I’m not in the mood for the opposition,” said Söder to the great applause of the party congress delegates. “We will show the left that we have not given up yet.” Laschet, who wants to speak at the CSU party conference in Nuremberg on Saturday, promised Söder a very warm and very warm welcome.
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With the demonstrative commitment to Laschet, Söder responded to irritations about CSU statements the day before. CSU General Secretary Markus Blume had said to the “Spiegel” with a view to the polls: “Of course we would be better off with Markus Söder.” Later, Blume regretted that there had been irritations and said his statements were related to Bavaria and the CSU been – with your own top candidate there would always be a natural home advantage.
CSU boss criticizes Olaf Scholz violently
“There is actually a threat of a political landslide,” said Söder, with a view to a possible alliance between the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party – red-red-green would be “a sharp left-wing stew”. At the same time, he also warned of a possible traffic light coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP – that would be a “diluted left-wing soup,” said the CSU chairman.
In his speech, Söder attacked SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz sharply. Specifically, he called for more extensive parliamentary investigations into the so-called cum-ex affair, among other things. There are “countless questions, no answers”. This “whole complex” deserved to be examined in parliament in the same way as the toll – there was an investigation committee in the Bundestag on the car toll debacle.
In the cum-ex scandal, Scholz had recently rejected any suspicion in an investigative committee of the Hamburg citizenship that, as Hamburg mayor, he had influenced the tax treatment of the Warburg Bank involved in the scandal.
Söder accused the Greens of “teaching and re-education morality” and cited the gender debate as an example. He rejected a compulsion to use gender-neutral terms. “We as the CSU do not accept any gender law or gender parking tickets,” he said. “We are a free state and not a reeducation state, common sense counts for us.” It should not be that students receive lower grades because they refuse to use the so-called gender asterisk in their theses.
From the FDP, Söder demanded a clear rejection of a traffic light with the SPD and the Greens. “Now I would really like to know from Christian Lindner and the FDP, (…) they want the traffic lights or not,” said the Bavarian Prime Minister. The FDP had to declare “that they reject this immoral offer from the left,” demanded Söder. “The left formula is: higher taxes, higher debts, more bureaucracy, less security,” warned the CSU chairman.
Markus Söder attacks AfD and lateral thinking
In his speech, however, Söder sharply attacked the AfD and the so-called lateral thinker movement. “Some of these lateral thinkers are developing into a new danger,” he said. Once again, Söder quoted from hate mail and letters that he received anonymously every day – and announced vigorous resistance to this.
In his speech, Söder also criticized how Scholz had reacted to current searches in his ministry. Here the impression arises that the Federal Finance Minister is almost offended that the public prosecutor’s office is performing its task, said the CSU chief.
Investigators searched the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice, which is also run by the SPD, in Berlin on Thursday. The background to this was an investigation by the Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office against the customs office for money laundering (FIU). According to the public prosecutor’s office, documents were confiscated during the searches in Berlin. Scholz later told the “world” that the investigations were directed against unknown employees in Cologne. In this context questions had arisen for the two ministries. This “could have been put in writing,” said the SPD politician.
More: Söder warns of inflation and euro bonds: “Scholz wants to do everything that Merkel has prevented”
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