The FDP Hamburg is facing the ultimate test. There are massive allegations against country chief Michael Kruse. Now his critics are to be thrown out of the party.
Update April 16, 2022: The quarrels in the Hamburg state association of the FDP are escalating and becoming more and more explosive: After the FDP state executive initiated arbitration proceedings with the aim of expelling them from the party against four politicians from the Young Liberals (JuLis), they are now sending a nationally known supporter into the race: ex-minister of the interior and FDP legend Gerhart Baum. The 89-year-old will legally represent the four young liberals.
Baum said in a first statement: “Different opinions and the exercise of freedom of expression within a party are not grounds for exclusion, as the experience of the last few decades has shown,” said Baum. And further: “It harms the FDP if it reacts with the sword of the exclusion procedure instead of facing up to these disputes.” Above all, the former Interior Minister (1978-1982) criticizes one point in particular: “It is completely absurd to these members to take away the membership rights with immediate effect.”
FDP Hamburg: State board for arbitration proceedings – only one dissenting vote
Update April 15, 2022: The party exclusion of the four Kruse critics could become more and more realistic. At the extraordinary meeting of the FDP state board on Thursday evening, April 14, 2022, a large majority voted to initiate arbitration proceedings – the clear goal of these proceedings: exclusion from the party! 15 members voted “yes”, only one politician voted against, several members of the board did not take part in the vote. Hamburg’s FDP leader Michael Kruse himself had declared himself biased in the vote.
Ex-JuLi boss Carl Cevin-Key Coste, whose criticism of this sensational process flared up nationwide, told our editorial team: “From a legal point of view, I would have advised the state board against this approach. But for my last accurate legal assessment, I also lost my speaker title,” Coste said. The party exclusion procedure is the “ultima ratio”. The immediate exclusion of four people “without prior statement of reasons” is a process “that, to my knowledge, has never happened in the Federal Republic.”
Original article from April 14, 2022: Hamburg – The Liberals have had a difficult time in the Hanseatic city since the last general election: the party also failed at the five percent hurdle in Hamburg as a result of the quarrels surrounding the then Thuringian short-term prime minister, Thomas Kemmerich*. Only one MP represents the party in Hamburg’s state parliament thanks to a direct mandate – the party’s representative in the Bundestag is the Hamburg FDP leader Michael Kruse. And he currently has a problem: the Young Liberals (JuLis). At the core of the dispute, Kruse is accused of authoritarian behavior and abuse of power. Now four young FDP politicians are to be thrown out of the party – shortly before the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, where the party “capable of governing with all democratic partners”*, there is a veritable crisis at the FDP Hamburg!
National Association: | FDP |
Chairman: | Michael Kruse |
Result citizenship election 2020: | 4.9 percent |
Result federal election 2021: | 11.4 percent |
FDP Hamburg: Four politicians about to be thrown out – JuLi boss appalled and shocked
An extraordinary board meeting of the FDP Hamburg was scheduled for Thursday evening, April 14, 2022. In it, the 21 members, including the member of the Bundestag Ria Schröder and ex-HSV*-President Carl-Edgar Jarchow, requested to initiate arbitration proceedings. This is directed against four members of the party – four “JuLis”: the new country leader Theresa Bardenhewer, ex-JuLi boss Carl Cevin-Key Coste and the deputy JuLi bosses Nils Knoben and Gloria Teichmann. All four should no longer belong to the FDP.
There has never been such a process, said JuLi boss Bardenhewer radio station NDR 90.3. She was horrified and shocked by what party leader Kruse was doing here.
FDP Hamburg: Criticism of party leader Michael Kruse – “substantive conformity”
The argument flared up after Kruse announced that to sue against the Corona hotspot regulation in Hamburg*. As a result, Carl Cevin-Key Coste, until recently the head of JuLi and now a member of the FDP state board, described the initiative as “a PR campaign and unworthy of a party based on the rule of law”. Apparently too much internal party criticism for the taste of Kruse – and the state executive in Hamburg. Coste was removed from his post as legal policy spokesman. “The last few days have shown how critics are dealt with in the FDP: that we are being put under pressure and trying to silence ourselves,” said Coste afterwards.
July Vice Nils Knoben then spoke of a “substantive synchronization” of the FDP Hamburg according to Kruse’s ideas. “After Mr. Kruse put massive pressure on our state chairman in the last week, he has now decided to carry out a political cleansing in the state executive board. As Young Liberals, we cannot condone such behavior. Young people should be deliberately silenced here,” says Knoben. He later apologized for the choice of words.
JuLi boss Bardenhewer: “I can’t put up with such an abuse of power”
And the criticism of Kruse goes even further. In particular, the Personalie Coste should be a thorn in the side of the head of state. According to the JuLis, Kruse is said to have tried to have Coste withdrawn from the FDP state executive as a JuLi representative. “There has never been such interference by the FDP with the JuLis. Political blackmail must not be a means of intra-party communication,” said JuLi regional head Bardenhewer. And further: “Especially as a young liberal feminist, I cannot put up with such an abuse of power.”
Kruse himself does not want to say anything about the process. At the request of our editors, it said: No statement! Only this much is known: The management of the national association is currently delegated to his deputy Andreas Moring. By the way: Despite an announcement to the contrary, Michael Kruse will not sue against the Corona hotspot regulation in Hamburg. A lawyer commissioned by him had assessed the prospects of a lawsuit “at the present time as not very promising”, said the head of the FDP Hamburg on Thursday evening. *24hamburg.de, 24RHINE and merkur.de are offered by IPPEN.MEDIA.
Note: The article has been updated several times since it was first published on April 14, 2022, 7:50 p.m.
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