Young voters in Saxony: “Well, first of all I have to say that the biggest climate killer is war” | EUROtoday

When requested about electoral points in Saxony, the 23-year-old from the CDU says issues like: “In the next legislative period, we must also address this issue explicitly.” The 30-year-old AfD man virtually all the time says that foreigners have to be deported. And the 35-year-old from the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance both talks about Corona, warfare or says: We nonetheless must “think about it in a structured way.”

On Monday night, seven Saxon state parliament candidates met on the MDR for the panel dialogue. In addition to the ballot leaders CDU (34 p.c), AfD (30 p.c) and BSW (eleven p.c), there are additionally younger politicians from the SPD, Greens, Left Party and FDP, the latter of which presently don’t attain the 5 p.c hurdle. The BSW member is the oldest on the stage, and there are additionally schoolchildren within the viewers who ask questions: “Young politics in the citizen's check” is the identify of the format.

At the start, a voice off-screen broadcasts: “People over 50 now make up almost 60 percent of those eligible to vote,” and later: Only 17 p.c of these eligible to vote in Saxony are below 35. The night ought to belong to this minority.

But they ask about subjects that concern all age teams, resembling trainer shortages, housing or expert labor shortages; migration isn’t a separate subject, and crime is barely narrowly restricted to the query of border crime and whether or not there ought to be a Saxon border guard (the CDU says the BSW isn’t secure, whereas the AfD complains concerning the “mass immigration” since 2015). It can also be about agriculture and forms. The household of the younger girl Luisa Hochstein from Wernsdorf close to Glauchau, for instance, runs a dairy farm and arable farming, she says.

Their downside is forms, and Hochstein has seen no discount in it. The first to reply is Paul Senf, 27, sixth on the checklist, constituency in Dresden, math scholar. He has no concrete concepts for decreasing forms in agriculture, he shortly switches to left-wing territory and speaks of the “market power of supermarkets” and a “minimum producer price” for farmers in order that they will additionally make dwelling from what they develop.

Luisa Strobel, FDP, 24, seventh place on the checklist, constituency in Vogtland, administrative specialist, says: “Bureaucracy is caused by subsidies.” The intention have to be for farmers to have the ability to function with out “outside help.” “These bureaucratic requirements” even have their origins in EU legislation, she additionally says.

The moderator interrupts: But forms can also be produced in Dresden, so what ought to be completely different in Saxony? The FDP candidate then concedes that she isn’t very conversant in this, and calls for: Above all, farmers ought to have the ability to make extra impartial selections. The Green Party's Carolin Renner, 27, works in a Green MP's workplace, is working in eleventh place on the checklist and in a Görlitz constituency. She solutions: She sees the issue, however “unfortunately has no answer to it. I have to be honest.” The one who requested the query is welcome to jot down to her.

Tina Trompter, the CDU member – far down on the checklist in comparison with the others in place 26, constituency in northern Saxony, she is an financial psychologist – then says like an previous hand the sentence concerning the “next legislative period” wherein the problem have to be addressed. And emphasizes that she lately did a ten-hour internship on a farm, the important thing phrases being listening, being near the individuals. She isn’t actually conversant in the problem “in detail” both; some laws are “correct”, she says, for instance the fertilizer regulation, and she or he additionally is aware of that the big worth fluctuations on the meals markets are an issue.

The Social Democrat within the group is aware of the forms downside from the “democracy promotion projects” the place she used to work, says Sophie Koch (31, quantity 3 on the checklist, constituency in Dresden). This is the place the advice to scale back forms comes from: it will be higher to say: “I trust you, you've been doing this well for years”; utilized to agriculture, after random checks that determine shortcomings, cash can nonetheless be ordered again, which ought to ease the burden on farmers.

AfD with kids's image, BSW with photographs of GDR information

The AfD and BSW usually are not getting concerned on this dialogue in any respect. Their candidates have lengthy been energetic within the milieus of their respective political fringes. The 35-year-old social advisor Nico Rudolph from the BSW, quantity 11 on the checklist, Chemnitz, has already tried his hand at Sahra Wagenknecht's early failed “Stand Up” venture. Jonas Dünzel from the AfD, an insurance coverage salesman, is taken into account a protégé of Maximilian Krah.

Years in the past, he supported Dünzel's candidacy for the chairmanship of the right-wing extremist AfD youth group; however Dünzel withdrew due to his wedding ceremony. In 2019, he defeated Dünzel as AfD candidate for the European Parliament.

At the very starting, all candidates had been requested to briefly introduce themselves and current an object. The very younger CDU girl offered a nutcracker “from the beautiful Erzgebirge”; the Greens girl offered a glass of soiled, brown Spree water that she wished to “clean up again”; the BSW man offered a calendar with photographs from his hometown, the Fritz Heckert prefab housing property in Chemnitz, the place many Russian Germans dwell. Dünzel from the AfD offered himself as a “family man, father of three children” and confirmed an image that his son had painted.

He returns to this within the subject of “teacher shortage”: “As a family man, it affects me even more,” he says. There can be no trainer scarcity with out “mass immigration to Germany,” he then says. But that is “misunderstood” and has “not even been discussed yet.” He is completely happy to speak about the truth that he’s the one one discussing migration.

Dünzel continues to say that 14,000 people who find themselves required to depart the nation dwell in Saxony. Renner from the Greens asks him: How lots of his “14,000” are kids, i.e. have something to do with faculty in any respect? Dünzel doesn’t reply this. The moderator strikes on to the subsequent block, the debt brake. A younger man, Clemens Neupert from Freiberg, desires to know what that is all about, in any case, “a state cannot go bankrupt in its own currency. It's like the bank in Monopoly.” He desires to know from the CDU, FDP and AfD: “Who do you want to make poorer?” The CDU and FDP disagree, the SPD member thanks the questioner for the immediate.

Then there’s a “lightning round” with fast, in all probability humorous questions. Senft from the Left Party has to reply whether or not he would somewhat meet Karl Marx or Che Guevara (Marx), Dünzel from the AfD whether or not he would somewhat have a root canal or spend three days on the Saxon Pride (Christopher Street Days, d. Red.) would have fun. “I prefer a root canal treatment,” says Dünzel.

Moving on shortly: Susanne Karas from Lößnitz trains nursing employees and desires to know what politicians need to do concerning the scarcity of expert staff and what function immigration ought to play on this. Without international medical doctors, hospital operations wouldn’t have the ability to proceed, she stresses. The Green Party is first to talk, saying that immigration will play a “huge” function and that in Saxony the popularity of international medical doctors takes a yr, however in Hamburg it solely takes between one and 17 days.

Nursing scarcity? It's about Corona “occupational bans”

The very first thing that involves thoughts for the BSW candidate is that the Corona vaccination requirement has had the impact of a “professional ban”, because it did within the nursing career, and that “trust must now be re-established”. Otherwise, they may “sit down with the associations and consider how to achieve this” – in different phrases, “think about it in a very structured way”. The AfD candidate says nothing concerning the problem of penalties and as an alternative says that the migration of extremely certified individuals is the actual downside – that’s “quite often forgotten”.

The patterns repeat themselves: On the query of the dearth of housing for college kids and trainees, the Left Party member says that his social gathering is demanding, amongst different issues, that the state take over rental deposits. Dünzel says: “Deportation creates housing.” Groans within the room. “There's no need to gasp, that's reality,” says Dünzel; the unique questioner, Max Trotte, a scholar from Dresden, calls it “nonsense.” On the topic of wind energy, the CDU and the Greens unanimously say that citizen participation in income promotes acceptance.

“Mr. Rudolph,” the moderator asks the BSW candidate, “is the BSW supporting the expansion of wind power and photovoltaics?” “Well, first of all I have to say that the biggest climate killer is war,” and that uranium ammunition has already been utilized in “NATO wars,” Rudolph replies, “and that this pollutes the environment.”

Are the viewers and questioners happy with the residents' verify? Unfortunately, the moderators virtually by no means ask what they consider the solutions from the panel. At the top, the moderators transfer shortly on to the subject of “division”; the editors have acquired many letters on the topic. Tina Trompter from the CDU praises Saxony's Prime Minister as a task mannequin as a result of he “just listens”; we have to do extra of that: hear, “engage in the discourse”.

The AfD man Dünzel sounds completely different and makes use of his final talking time to rule out {that a} Green may ever be proper in “all important policy areas”. Rudolph from the BSW then desires to speak concerning the “divide between rich and poor”, however music that begins abruptly cuts him off. The broadcast time is over.