Membership vote of the SPD on the coalition agreement 2013

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Membership vote of the SPD on the coalition agreement 2013
Votes in%
Yes
  
 75.96
No
  
 24.04
Voting documents for the membership vote

The SPD's member vote on the 2013 coalition agreement was a questioning of the members of the SPD who were supposed to decide on the 2013 coalition agreement to form a joint federal government with the CDU and CSU . It was the first member survey of party members in Germany that dealt with such a question.

75.96 percent of the valid votes were for the confirmation of the coalition agreement, the turnout was around 78 percent.

background

After the 2013 federal election , the Union parties held talks with Bündnis90 / Die Grünen and started negotiations to form a grand coalition with the SPD. Since there were reservations against the formation of this coalition within the SPD, the implementation of a vote of all SPD members came into the discussion and was decided by the executive committee. On November 1, 2013, party chairman Sigmar Gabriel announced that the SPD members would be able to vote on the coalition agreement between December 6 and 12, and that the party would consider the result to be binding if at least 20 percent of the members participated.

All SPD members, regardless of their age and nationality, who were registered as members on November 13th at 6 p.m. were entitled to vote. There were 474,820 party members. The costs for the membership vote amounted to around 1.6 million euros.

Positions on the coalition agreement

Since the conclusion of the coalition negotiations, the SPD leadership has been campaigning for its acceptance. However, there were also negative votes. The writer and SPD member Günter Grass spoke out against the acceptance. Even Kenan Kolat , chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany , spoke out against the coalition agreement because all the introduction of a coalition agreement adopted in double nationality did not go far enough.

On December 2, 2013 it was announced that seven state associations of the Jusos would reject the coalition agreement. The Federal Association of Jusos accepted with a large majority the motion of eight regional associations to speak out in favor of a no.

Threatening phone calls to critics of the coalition agreement

In the run-up to the voting, there were threatening phone calls to young SPD members (Jusos) who had spoken out publicly against the coalition with the Union. These threatening calls apparently came from a man named Michael Wiegand, who made these calls on behalf of Andrea Nahles from a telephone connection in the SPD party headquarters. The SPD and Andrea Nahles state that these calls never took place and that Michael Wiegand still does not work there. The call came from a hacker who tried to manipulate the SPD member survey in favor of the Union. The SPD leadership apologized to the indignant Jusos and filed criminal charges against the hacker. The Hedonist International with the section “Commando Gerhard Schröder” committed to the action .

Discussion about the authenticity of the members

On December 4, 2013, Spiegel Online published a report about the CDU member and Göttingen student Till Warning, who had succeeded in receiving the SPD voting documents by post by giving a false name. Under the porn pseudonym "Richard Deep" he had registered online as an SPD member - without his identity being checked. The Göttingen local association chairman Stefan Niebuhr told Spiegel Online that he had already heard the name "Richard Deep".

The story sparked wide media coverage and was also discussed abroad. On December 5, 2013, an anonymous appeal by a CDU representative from Berlin-Schöneberg to remove Warning from the Union to which he actually belonged appeared in the BZ . A party expulsion process was never opened. In the ZDFneo show “Nate Light” with Philip Simon on December 12, 2013, Warning then publicly voted “No”. On the day of the vote, however, the voting card accidentally fell on the leash , as he u. a. stated opposite the Göttinger VIEW. A spokesman for the Göttingen public prosecutor's office had already stated on December 5, 2013 that there was no initial suspicion of a crime.

Constitutional discussion

The constitutional lawyer Christoph Degenhart saw in the member vote an interference with the free mandate of the MPs, as this way the members of the party decided on how the parliamentary group should vote. However, Degenhart also says that the SPD can of course first question its members and that this questioning is of course not legally binding for parliamentarians.

Due to the question of the constitutionality of the membership decision, on the evening of November 28, 2013, during the heute journal , a dispute broke out between the ZDF presenter Marietta Slomka and the SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, in the course of which he called the objections "nonsense" designated. He argued that in most of the other parties only the party executive committee votes on coalition issues, but only consists of a fraction of the people who are allowed to have a say in a ballot. Gabriel was given the right content in the media.

The 2nd Chamber of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court decided on December 6, 2013 to reject an urgent motion by a private person against the membership vote, as it did not consider the establishment of internal party positions to be state action and the free mandate of the Bundestag members was not endangered by the vote. In addition, the Constitutional Court again emphasized the constitutionally protected right of parties to participate in the formation of will, because only through them can a stable democracy develop in a large community.

Counting

Barbara Hendricks signing the coalition agreement for the 18th parliamentary term of the Bundestag (2013)

The letters received were stored in a logistics center of Deutsche Post in Leipzig and opened under the control of a notary and the mandate review and counting commission (MPZK). This was composed of envoys from the state and district associations. The chairwoman of the MPZK was Federal Treasurer Barbara Hendricks .

The completed voting cards were transported to Berlin on December 13, 2013 in a truck in a car convoy, accompanied by security personnel and members of the party executive committee. Two slot machines opened up to 40,000 voting envelopes per hour with the voting cards they contained. The counting was carried out by 400 voluntary and unpaid party members in the Berlin station , who had signed a declaration of confidentiality and had to refrain from taking communication devices with them. External service providers should receive the minimum hourly wage of 8.50 euros stipulated in the coalition agreement. The count was monitored by the MPZK and a notary.

Result

On December 14, 2013, MPZK chairwoman Barbara Hendricks announced that 75.96 percent of the valid votes (participation of almost 78 percent) were in favor of the coalition agreement. With the result, the SPD base had approved the coalition agreement between the SPD, CDU and CSU. In the event of a negative outcome, a grand coalition would presumably not have come about.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SPD General Secretary Nahles: “Forming a government can drag on until January” on spiegel.de, September 30, 2013; Retrieved December 2, 2013
  2. ↑ a b Vote on coalition agreement: What you should know about the SPD member vote , Spiegel Online from December 12, 2013
  3. ↑ Dual citizenship? “The SPD broke its word” on berliner-zeitung.de, November 28, 2013; Retrieved December 2, 2013
  4. ↑ The motion against the formation of a grand coalition is supported by the Juso regional associations of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Berlin and Bremen as well as the district associations of Braunschweig, Hanover and Weser-Ems. See Seven Juso regional associations against grand coalition on faz.de, 2. December 2013; Retrieved December 2, 2013
  5. ↑ SPD youth organization rejects coalition agreement - failed at the Jusos ( memento of December 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on tagesschau.de, December 7, 2013; Retrieved December 16, 2013
  6. ^ Threat calls in the name of Andrea Nahles on zeit.de, December 4, 2013; Retrieved March 19, 2014
  7. ^ Threatening calls to SPD members: Gerhard Schröder's command
  8. ↑ www.zeit.de: SPD: threatened phone call from "command Gerhard Schröder"?
  9. ^ "How Richard Deep cheated in the member vote" SPON article from December 4, 2013; accessed April 22, 2015
  10. ^ Till Warning, le pseudo porno qui vote au SPD Le Journal International of December 5, 2013, accessed on April 22, 2015
  11. ↑ Radio interview with the German radio program of nbc, Namibia from December 5, 2013, accessed on April 22, 2015
  12. ↑ BZ Berlin of December 5, 2013, p. 2.
  13. ↑ BLICK Göttingen Interview and text ( memento of the original from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on April 22, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.die-wochenblaetter.de
  14. ^ Dpa report on hna.de, accessed on April 22, 2015
  15. ^ Constitutional lawyer questions SPD survey on coalition agreement on Handelsblatt.de, November 28, 2013; Retrieved December 2, 2013
  16. ↑ Constitutional lawyer questions SPD survey on coalition agreement on n-tv.de, November 29, 2013; accessed on January 7, 2014
  17. ↑ Gabriel vs. Slomka: The fact check for the ZDF interview on spiegel.de, November 28, 2013; Retrieved December 2, 2013
  18. ^ Federal Constitutional Court: Decision 2 BvQ 55/13 of December 6, 2013 ; Retrieved December 8, 2013
  19. ^ Membership decision : Social Democrats vote for grand coalition. In: Spiegel Online. December 14, 2013, accessed December 14, 2013 .