Isomeday it will be too late. At some point, the opportunity to successfully stop rumors of resignation will be gone. Admittedly, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) caught the numerous media reports about the alleged impending withdrawal of Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) at a difficult moment: on Friday evening.
But twelve hours of roaring silence later, on Saturday morning, it was no longer possible to successfully counter the reports about the end of Christine Lambrecht’s political career that had rained down on the Ministry of Defence, the Chancellery and the party headquarters of the traffic light partners.
In the past few weeks, questions as to whether Scholz would stick with Lambrecht had always been answered by the federal government with a yes, which came as a matter of course. On Friday evening, the Chancellor’s environment said about the media reports that “nothing can be said about it”.
Lambrecht is unfamiliar with her office
The Ministry of Defense announced on Saturday morning, as it had the evening before, that they did not comment on rumours. In the ranks of the coalition partners, there was almost an astonished reaction on Saturday night, apparently not even in the SPD did they know whether Lambrecht wanted to resign or not.
Lambrecht’s step would not be fundamentally surprising. After a year in office, during which Russia’s war against Ukraine had pushed the German defense minister to the second most important position in the cabinet after the chancellor, she was obviously alienated from her task.
Not only did she remain unfamiliar with the Bundeswehr, she openly argued with the Minister of Finance on such an important issue as the procurement of ammunition in times of all-dominating support for Ukraine, and she had to helplessly admit that the Puma infantry fighting vehicle showed considerable technical deficits.
By at least unfortunate collisions between her private life and her official duties, Lambrecht gave the impression that she was not doing the right thing. As is the case in the dynamic of failing at political office, there is a straw that breaks the camel’s back. In her case, it was the New Year’s Eve video in front of Berlin’s firecracker landscape that finally confirmed the minister’s impression of a lack of seriousness.
But for both the chancellor and the minister, at least outwardly, Friday had not gone like their last working day together. Both took part in the parliamentary group meeting of the SPD in the Bundestag. Scholz tried to calm social democratic spirits by assuring him that he would not allow himself to be driven by public pressure when it came to supplying arms to Ukraine.
In the early afternoon he received the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammend al-Sudani and spoke to him primarily about gas deliveries. Less than two hours later, Lambrecht appeared with Inspector General Eberhard Zorn and top representatives of the armaments industry to spread optimism about the future of the Puma infantry fighting vehicle. Business as usual. Or rather: poker face.
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