Ziemiak criticizes the SPD: "Do not abuse religion for election campaigns"

The CDU has asked the SPD to refrain from making a controversial campaign film.

"The best thing now would be for everyone not to turn this into a major debate in the election campaign, but simply to simply withdraw this film," said CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak on Monday in Berlin.

One should "no longer misuse a religious creed in order to campaign against others."

The trigger is an SPD election spot in which one CDU politician after the other emerges from a matryoshka doll. "Whoever votes for Armin Laschet and the CDU, votes ..." says one voice. To the doll with the likeness of CDU economic politician Friedrich Merz, the voice goes on to say “... a policy that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer”. For the doll with the face of the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the sentence is supplemented with "... candidates who push the CDU to the right margin".

Next comes a doll with the likeness of the Düsseldorf State Chancellery and Laschet confidante Nathanael Liminski.

Here the sentence is supplemented with "... arch-Catholic Laschet confidants, for whom sex before marriage is a taboo".

This alludes to a statement by the avowed Catholic, which he justified in the ARD program “Maischberger” in 2007 as a “personal decision”.

Liminski was still a student at the time.

In the program he also spoke out "against any kind of artificial contraception".

A question of style

Ziemiak said: “We imagined the SPD's commitment to a fair election campaign to be different.” Apparently it was a “new style of the SPD”.

Her top candidate Olaf Scholz now has to explain “whether he wants to continue to abuse his religious affiliation, his affiliation with the Catholic faith, for a campaign in the election campaign”.

The film also caused great outrage among the population.

The German Bishops' Conference was also critical.

Dealing with an expression of religious conviction was "inappropriate", said a spokeswoman for the editorial network Germany.

"We are promoting a fair election campaign, which should be carried out on the basis of factual issues and in dealing with the election programs."

In an interview with RTL West on Monday evening, Laschet himself also spoke up. After a tweet from the RTL regional window, Laschet said: "I was surprised by the methods that Olaf Scholz is now using to campaign for an election."