IThere are rumblings in the FDP. How loud is a matter of opinion. At the party headquarters you only want to hear a quiet rustle, but some at the grassroots believe it’s a really big noise. A small group of party friends want to speed up the end of the traffic lights. She has collected signatures to push through a member survey. Namely, whether the FDP should get out of the traffic lights. “Are you a member of the FDP and want an end to the traffic light coalition at the federal level? Then you’ve come to the right place!” This is how visitors to the website that promotes the signature campaign are greeted. On Wednesday, the signature collectors reported success. The number of 500 signed applications required for a survey has been received, said one of the co-initiators, Kassel district chairman Matthias Nölke, to the German Press Agency.
Getting rid of the Greens and the SPD is actually what many in the FDP long for. Party leader Christian Lindner also sometimes sighs deeply. At a recent appearance in Switzerland, he couched his complaint about the conditions at home in praise of those abroad: “Now that political realities are forcing me to govern with the Social Democrats and the Greens, I am happy to breathe the air of freedom.” But that’s how it is No matter how fresh the Swiss air may be, it will never blow in the Bundestag. That’s where those who sit there sit. The leading politicians of the FDP describe the fantasy that the traffic lights could soon be history as unrealistic because all alternatives seem even worse to them.
But others in the party think: enough is enough, it’s over now. Just like the 26 state and local politicians who recently wrote an open letter demanding that the Liberals should get out of the traffic lights. And that’s how the leaders of the signature campaign see it, they are FDP politicians from the Kassel-Stadt district association. Its chairman Nölke recently said that the FDP was in an existential crisis. His initiative was intended to make it clear that not everyone in the party agreed with the traffic light course.
Of course, no one would have needed this message – because the FDP leadership is also dissatisfied with a lot of what the traffic light does and doesn’t do and how the FDP is doing. However, the SPD and the Greens would also like to implement their ideas more consistently. That’s why the coalition members argue so much. This in turn increases frustration at the grassroots level. At first glance, there aren’t many people whose patience is now breaking.
“Participation party” with a bitter undertone
In the Genscherhaus people joke with bitter undertones that they are the real participatory party. Even from the SPD you can hear astonished questions: How, so few are enough for you? Even at the FDP party headquarters, no one doubted that the 500 votes needed for a member survey would be collected. People there were more surprised that it took weeks – when supposedly so many people urgently want an end to the traffic lights. The demonstrative composure should be easier for the FDP leadership because a member survey is different from a member decision.
For the latter, the hurdles are significantly higher – according to the statutes, five percent of the party members would have to sign the application. Of the FDP’s current 75,000 members, that would be 3,750. Alternatively, five state associations or a hundred district associations would have to come together. In 2011, FDP member of the Bundestag Frank Schäffler managed to collect the necessary signatures for a members’ decision on the ESM euro rescue package. He ultimately failed – but he frightened his party leadership.
The membership survey that is now imminent cannot force the party leadership to do anything. The statutes state: “The party’s organs are not bound in their decision-making to the results of the member survey.” The process can still be tricky. Because it is likely to be accompanied by weeks of public debate. This is bad advertising. It is also not suitable as a means of pressure in the coalition, according to the motto: Let us decide more, otherwise the base will climb on our roof. All three alliance partners have been saying this for months. And what if it ultimately turns out that a majority of FDP members want to get out of the traffic lights? Simply ignoring it wouldn’t be a good idea.
That’s why the party headquarters has made an effort over the past few days to handle the matter as unobtrusively and smoothly as possible. They are now considering how the members will be surveyed – digitally, by postal vote, through a decentralized vote in person or a mixture of these. The result is open – unlike Schäffler’s membership decision twelve years ago, there is no dispute in the Bundestag faction, no conflict in which the party’s leading politicians face each other.
Even traffic light skeptics like FDP deputy leader Wolfgang Kubicki remain on Lindner’s course despite occasional tirades against the Greens. Kubicki recently countered party friends who were calling for the traffic lights to be removed in the FAZ by saying that their frustration was understandable, but that their wish had not been “thought through.” The question, of course, is how the FDP leadership would think if the conditions of the idea changed, i.e. the traffic lights no longer seemed like the least of the evils.
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