CDU mask affair: Paul Ziemiak sees CDU image damaged

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CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak sees the mask affair as a major damage to the image of his party.

"The events have shaken our party, our members are just as angry as Armin Laschet and I," said Ziemiak of the Düsseldorf "Rheinische Post".

"It is about the misconduct of individual people." He refuses to "take the many committed and sincere into kin". 

Ziemiak emphasized that hundreds of thousands of people volunteer in the CDU and that there are thousands of elected officials.

“These individual cases hit us all, make us angry and embarrassed.” The CDU politician did not want to draw a comparison with the party donation affair: “The party donation affair in the 1990s was a completely different issue and back then it was not about individual cases.

Nevertheless, the image damage is great these days. "

The deputy chairman of the Union parliamentary group, Carsten Linnemann, called for a reform of the law on parliament because of the mask scandal.

"It must be ruled out that you get money for activities that have to do with the parliamentary mandate," said Linnemann of the "image".

These included lobby fees, but also fees for speeches and newspaper articles.

“The taxpayer pays for politics and nobody else, otherwise you get dependent.

Violations must be clearly sanctioned in the law, ”demanded Linnemann.

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In a representative survey by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of the “Augsburger Allgemeine”, 92 percent of those questioned said that the Union politicians involved in the mask affair should repay the commissions they received.

Only five percent of those questioned refused, four percent were undecided.

Among the Union and FDP supporters, 88 percent each voted for the repayment, with the Greens, SPD and Left over 94 percent, among AfD supporters 90 percent. 

The members of the Bundestag Georg Nüßlein (CSU) and Nikolas Löbel (CDU) are said to have earned six-figure commissions each for brokering activities in protective mask businesses.

You have since left the Union faction.

The incidents had caused outrage nationwide.

On Wednesday, the leadership of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group gave all Union members until Friday evening to comment on possible financial benefits in connection with pandemic-related transactions.