From Hildburg Bruns
HE was YOUR trouble shooter. The problem solver for your greatest promise. Andreas Geisel (56, SPD) should boost housing construction for the governing Franziska Giffey (44, SPD). Now he’s her biggest problem.
Representatives of the CDU, FDP and AfD are calling for his resignation. Because in the last electoral term, Geisel, as the interior senator at the time, was politically responsible for the election disaster – he had legal supervision of the state election commission.
So far, only the state returning officer at the time has paid for the mistake – Petra Michaelis (64) asked the Senate in October to have her recalled.
When asked how you rate the chaos, Geisel replied on election night: “Not at all. That is a matter for the state returning officer and the district electoral offices. The organization of the election is not the responsibility of the internal administration.”
The independent expert commission later set up by the Senate found clear words on this in July: “Because it was a failure, nobody wanted to take responsibility.”
According to Professor Christian Waldhoff (57), however, legal supervision means “accompanying the preparation of the election, intervening in the event of problems and not just subsequent checks”.
Geisel is history as an interior senator – he changed departments after the election and is now responsible for urban development. He has lost importance in the party – he is no longer deputy party leader.
In the red-green-red Senate team, Geisel is considered Giffey’s closest confidant. In particular, they are united by their resistance to the imminent expropriation of large real estate groups.
Without Geisel at their side, the resistance against the supporters of the “Initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co expropriate” would crumble.
That’s what hostage says
Geisel himself has rejected the resignation demands. “It’s not that I don’t feel responsible. But the question is what decision do you make to make things better, and I have decided to work,” he said on Wednesday evening at a readers’ forum of the “Berliner Morgenpost”.
According to the election law and the constitution, he does not have technical supervision, but legal supervision, said the SPD politician. “I was a candidate myself and shouldn’t have intervened,” stressed Geisel and asked: “What would it do better if I resigned?”
He has a task in Berlin, which consists of developing the city and building apartments. “And when I examine myself and ask myself: Did you organize the election, then I say: No, you didn’t organize the election. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to make sure it never happens again.”
with dpa