Christine Lambrecht, Manuela Schwesig and Peter Feldmann are three top SPD politicians with serious scandals in recent months. Despite public calls, none of the three have resigned. Politicians, including ministers, have resigned from their positions in the past because of much smaller trifles.
Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor Peter Feldmann is stuck in corruption proceedings, in a sexism scandal, in a swamp of embarrassment and official failure. The entire media landscape in Hesse and the political public from the CDU to Volt, from the Greens to the FDP are urgently demanding his resignation, even Eintracht Frankfurt officially no longer wants to see him in the stadium – but Peter Feldmann remains in office.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig is deeply involved in the Nord Stream 2 scandal. It has allowed itself to be externally controlled by the Kremlin, installed a climate foundation worth millions as a front company and lobby institution for Gazprom, deceived the public and got caught up in all sorts of contradictions. She is also widely asked to resign, keyword is a turning point – but Manuela Schwesig remains in office.
Federal Defense Ministry Christine Lambrecht strays through the Ukraine crisis, struggles through the helicopter flight scandal, strangers to the Bundeswehr, regularly embarrasses German foreign policy and now there is also trouble with overly expensive promotions of comrades. The majority of Germans explicitly want their resignation, which is rarely the case with a specialist minister – but Christine Lambrecht also remains in office.
What do all three have in common? You are a top politician in the SPD. The Greens, Liberals and CDU/CSU are increasingly dissatisfied with the slowness of the Social Democrats in dealing with their own scandals. The Gerhard Schröder case is already a burden on the party, but the refusal of important officials to take responsibility in the event of damage has a new effect in this dimension.
“Apparently the SPD is trying to shift the standards for resignations in their favor,” says a CDU presidium member. However, the lack of understanding about the coalition partner is also growing among the Greens. Because the Green Federal Minister for Family Affairs Anne Spiegel resigned within a few days when her travel behavior during the flood disaster was discussed. Likewise the CDU top politician and NRW environment minister Ursula Heinen-Esser. Both offenses are significantly smaller than the events surrounding Feldmann, Schwesig or Lambrecht. “The SPD will damage informal democracy if the principle of responsibility no longer applies,” says the FDP with concern.
In fact, the resignations of politicians always mark a status of the country’s political culture. In the past, ministers have resigned for minor offenses, Cem Özdemir once resigned because of the private use of official bonus miles – a trifle compared to Lambrecht’s Easter helicopter flight with his son on a Sylt vacation. There were also resignations because politicians honorably accepted responsibility for mistakes that were not made personally, such as the Federal Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters or the Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung after disastrous security operations.
Gustav Heinemann (later Federal President) resigned in 1950 in protest against the rearmament of the Federal Republic. Erhard Eppler, who did not want to support Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s new policy, resigned as Minister for Development Aid in 1974. And Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger decided to take this step in 1995 because she rejected the large-scale eavesdropping.
“I made mistakes, but they really wouldn’t have been enough to make me resign. Nevertheless, I decided to take this step because it is part of my political self-image that one takes political responsibility for one’s own mistakes.” Andrea Fischer of the Greens demonstrated this high ethos of responsibility in 2001 when she became the Federal Minister of Health after their mismanagement in the BSE crisis was accused.
Today, the motive of organizational responsibility or attitude towards a resignation seems to have gone out of fashion with the SPD. The three current SPD cases even involve a combination of personal mistakes and political organizational failure. But if that is no longer sufficient as a reason for resignation, that raises the question of why the SPD is now shifting the standards and pursuing office cling?
In political Berlin it is suspected that there is concern about a domino effect. Should Lambrecht and Schwesig have to resign, then the chancellor and the federal president will have a hard time if the SPD’s contacts in the Putin-Gazprom system show signs of expansion. More and more rumors about the Russian involvement of the SPD politicians Sigmar Gabriel and Heino Wiese are currently doing the rounds. The SPD headquarters is therefore nervous, especially with a view to the state elections in Lower Saxony. The SPD holds a line of defense, so to speak, which is the real reason why obviously overdue resignations are not coming now.
