"I now welcome Nancy Faeser to the occasional visit to Hesse." With these words, the Secretary General of the Hessian CDU, Manfred Pentz, reacted to the announcement by the Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser (SPD), that she would not be in office in Berlin for the top candidate in the Hessian state elections to give up.

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

  • Follow I follow

This dual function is very demanding, said Pentz.

He expressed the hope that important decisions in the Federal Ministry of the Interior would not be instrumentalized by party politics: "Of course, people will be very careful that the office is not misused for election campaign purposes." A large number of negative headlines have accompanied Faeser since the beginning of her time as Federal Minister of the Interior a year.

"I don't see how this can be reconciled with an election campaign in Hesse," says Pentz.

Faeser has given in to pressure from her own party, says the parliamentary group leader of the Greens in the state parliament, Mathias Wagner: "With regard to the Hesse SPD, however, we ask ourselves: How does the SPD want to lead a government in times like these if they are already for it takes months to nominate your own top candidate?”

However, the long hesitation and hesitation is understandable.

Because the Hessian SPD has so far failed to come up with any conceptual alternatives to the work of the state government.

Obviously, Faeser himself doesn't really believe in winning the next election with the SPD, says Wagner: "Otherwise she wouldn't try to dance at two weddings at the same time, but would do all she could to take care of Hesse."

As a precaution, Faeser bought a return ticket to Berlin, says Stefan Naas, the FDP's top candidate.

It is doubtful that the office in Berlin does not suffer from the balancing act.

The Federal Minister of the Interior has a multitude of challenges to overcome, "from extremist threats from the right and left to taking in refugees".

The left was also skeptical "whether the dual role of top candidate and ministerial office is a good decision".

The parliamentary group leader Elisabeth Kula believes that Faeser "as a conservative social democrat" has repeatedly sent out contradictory signals.

With her demand for a deportation offensive and her statements about supposed "integration refusers" during the New Year's Eve riots, she "served right-wing resentment," according to Kula.

The chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Robert Lambrou, also complains about Faeser's dual role.

With her announcement, she disqualifies herself either as a top candidate or as Federal Minister of the Interior: "In the end, she probably doesn't seem to believe in herself and in the success of the SPD in Hesse if she keeps the ministerial post as reassurance." The AfD allows Faeser to election campaign to point out in no uncertain terms the faulty policy of the Federal Minister of the Interior.