The future Secretary General Kevin Kühnert is to start preparing for Olaf Scholz’s re-election campaign at an early stage at the request of the SPD leadership. “Kevin Kühnert has already shown as Juso chairman that he is good at organizing campaigns. The next campaign he will organize is the re-election of Olaf Scholz ”, said the designated SPD leader Lars Klingbeil in an interview with the“ Tagesspiegel ”.
Klingbeil, Saskia Esken, Kühnert and the five vice chairmen are to be elected next Sunday at another SPD party conference. Already on Saturday there was approval of the coalition agreement with the Greens and the FDP at an extraordinary party congress, and Scholz is to be elected Chancellor and successor to Angela Merkel in the German Bundestag on December 8th.
Kühnert had organized several campaigns in the past, which were also directed against Scholz. So he fought against the grand coalition and supported the candidacy of Saskia Esken and Norbert-Walter-Borjans in order to prevent Olaf Scholz from taking over the party leadership. He was also initially skeptical about Scholz’s candidacy for chancellor.
Klingbeil rejected the impression that the party left Kühnert could be a risk for the SPD and the work of the government. “A general secretary stands in the middle of the party and ensures its cohesion. As deputy party chairman, Kevin Kühnert has made a significant contribution to the unity and willingness to fight of the SPD over the past two years, ”emphasized the previous Secretary General Klingbeil.
In addition, one wants to learn lessons from the start of government in 1998. It is important to learn from the mistakes of the early days of Gerhard Schröder’s government in 1998. “At that time, party chairman Oskar Lafontaine tried to make life difficult for the Chancellor. We won’t repeat that. ”Olaf Scholz knows that he can rely on the new party leadership. “And we think beyond the four years of the legislative period.”
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Klingbeil: FDP does not dictate corona policy to us
The future SPD leader Klingbeil also rejected the impression that the future Chancellor Olaf Scholz is too driven by the FDP in the pandemic policy. “I was there at the negotiations and we made all the decisions together,” said Klingbeil to the “Tagesspiegel”. “It is simply not true that the FDP dictated the way for us here. Many in the SPD and the Greens had also urged that the corona policy be put on a different constitutional basis. ”Klingbeil emphasized that it was good that there was now a bipartisan consensus for tightening up, which will be decided in the Bundestag next week target.
At the same time, he admitted that there had been failures that made fighting the fourth wave difficult. “Action was taken too late or too hesitantly. But politics was not alone in this attitude. Even the Standing Vaccination Commission recommended a booster vaccination a few weeks ago only for people over 70 ”, emphasized Klingbeil. “But for me it’s not about shifting responsibility back and forth. We now have to act consistently with vaccinations and boosters. ”
