The CDU has declared the state election in Brandenburg to be a crucial election for the traffic light coalition government at the federal level. If voters’ contribution is large enough, then “on September 23 – the day after – the traffic light coalition’s house will burn on all three floors,” said CDU party leader Friedrich Merz at an election campaign event in Brandenburg an der Havel. “And then at some point the traffic light antics will be over.”
The traffic light coalition is at an end, Merz explained. “The traffic light coalition has been switched off and nothing more will happen.” The crucial question will be answered the day after the state election in Brandenburg: “Will they continue for another year? (…) Or will the election result in Brandenburg be such that they themselves come to the conclusion that it can’t go on,” said the CDU leader. “The traffic light coalition is finished. Nothing more will happen.”
Saxony’s CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer and Thuringia’s CDU leader Mario Voigt also used similar wording. The political style in Berlin is “unaccustomed to,” said Kretschmer. If this political style is not changed, “it will not end well here.” The traffic light coalition does not want to understand and the SPD is babbling about the “best chancellor of the SPD.” A clear signal is therefore needed from Brandenburg. “‘Traffic light off and common sense on’ is the message that must be sent to the country.”
Voigt also contributed to the demise of the traffic light coalition at the election event in Brandenburg an der Havel. “Because there is more common sense in every small community in Brandenburg than in the administrative districts in Berlin,” Voigt shouted from the stage. People are fed up because they have the impression that they are being governed by people who do not have their own lives under control, but want to explain how people should eat, move around or heat their homes. The traffic light coalition will no longer be able to use excuses on September 22nd. “Enough is enough. The traffic light must be turned off.”
The CDU’s top candidate in the state elections in Brandenburg, Jan Redmann, even spoke of a “mission” in the upcoming state elections on September 22nd to “switch off the traffic lights in Berlin and switch reason back on”. The signals from Thuringia and Saxony had been ignored. “The signal in Potsdam will not be ignored in Berlin,” said Redmann.
The three traffic light parties SPD, Greens and FDP had miserable results in Sunday’s elections. The Free Democrats only achieved values of around one percent in both states and thus missed out on a place in the state parliaments by a wide margin. The SPD had its worst results to date in both state elections, in Thuringia even the worst result in a state election ever with 6.1 percent.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and the party leadership had described the results as bitter, but at the same time expressed relief that the SPD had managed to return to the state parliaments, contrary to individual polls before the election.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240904-930-223275/1
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