It was only a matter of time and now it has happened. The first head has rolled in the traffic light government led by the godfather of Hamburg - the gangster Olaf Scholz. Federal Minister for Family Affairs Anne Spiegel (Greens) announced her resignation from her office on the afternoon of 11 April 2022, and only a good four months after being sworn in. The reason lies in the flood disaster in July last year. At the time, Anne Spiegel was the state minister for the environment in Rhineland-Palatinate, which was badly affected by the flood. Nevertheless, Spiegel, who was directly responsible because of her office at the time, went on holiday for a whole four weeks only ten days after the flood.
Only yesterday evening, Anne Spiegel tried to justify herself in a pathetic statement on the accusations. Her offices had been too much for her, her poor children had had such a hard time in the pandemic and her husband had also been ill - that's why she had had to go on holiday. She recited this whole explanation in a trembling voice, almost whimpering for sympathy, which she will not get from the people and the workers.
In the whole process of investigation against her, one inconsistency after another emerged. Several times it was confirmed that she had lied. For example, she claimed that she had participated in meetings at least by live video transmission, which in the end turned out to be a lie.
As a federal minister in probably the most corrupt government ever in the FRG, Anne Spiegel was of course not free of "scandals". Spiegel is said to have used money from her ministry to finance her election campaign at the state level, which is obviously illegal but a common practice among bourgeois politicians.
The flood disaster in the summer of 2021
On 14 and 15 July 2021, a severe flood disaster occurred in parts of NRW and Rhineland-Palatinate. Different districts were affected, entire villages were razed to the ground, at least 180 people lost their lives and thousands of livelihoods were destroyed. Although precise warnings for such a disaster were issued to the state government and to the counties, the responsible politicians kept the population in the dark and simply let happen what happened.
The flood last summer coincided directly with the federal election campaign, so that the candidates for the chancellorship were already on the mat the day after the catastrophe and instrumentalised the shit for their election campaign. The CDU candidate for chancellorship, Armin Laschet, was particularly outstanding at this point, when he started laughing heartily after a speech in Erftstadt that had been affected, thus unintentionally expressing all his cynicism. The CDU played a very special role in the flood disaster anyway, especially since many affected circles were and are led by CDU politicians. Even then, the inaction despite the warnings suggested more political calculation than simple mistakes. Calculation, with the aim of winning the election through a new edition of Gerhardt Schröder's "rubber boot campaign" of 2002. This black role of the CDU in the whole affair should be kept in mind when looking now at the cheeky CDU, which was the first to demand the resignation of Anne Spiegel.
