Merkel’s union open to gender quotas in Bundestag

The CDU / CSU parliamentary group is open to a gender quota in the Bundestag to include more women. It saddened them, “that the proportion of women in the German Bundestag is currently only 30 percent,” said the chairman of the group of women of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Yvonne Magwas.

“It’s smart and future-oriented when more women work in parliaments. This must be present permanent theme.”

This applies to all parties, but is also the subject for the forthcoming electoral reform. “The increase in the proportion of women must be discussed in the electoral reform,” demanded the Saxon MPs. Because democracy only works “when women and men are equally involved”.

On Wednesday, the Vice President of the Bundestag, Thomas Oppermann (SPD), proposed a corresponding change in the electoral law in order to increase the proportion of women in parliament. Oppermann had called for a merger of Bundestag constituencies in a conversation with German daily Die Welt.

In such larger constituencies, one man and one woman should, according to his vision, have to compete against each other. “The options of the voters are thus expanded: you can choose a man, a woman and a party. So we would almost have a three-fold vote,” he noted euphorically.

Oppermann considers his proposal so good that it offers no alternative. “Honestly, I do not see any other way. All other suggestions are more or less based on another suffrage.”

The AfD has meanwhile demanded a more consistent approach against the left-wing extremist scene in Germany,  but female politicians have been defending violent leftists.

The AfD MEP Martin Hess, who initiated the application, said that left-wing extremism is not a “fabricated problem” as the former Federal Minister for Families Manuela Schwesig’s claims, but a dangerous  threat.

Some 83 percent of left-wing violence is directed against state authorities, institutions and symbols. “With massive force Antifa and Autonomists want to prevent the deputies and members of our party, to participate in the political decision-making, as befits our democratic mission. The government must finally stop these attacks on democracy and act consistently against left-wing extremism,” Hess said.

There is a strong imbalance in the government’s action against the various forms of extremism, the former Chief Commissioner complained. He refered to a statistic of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, according to which 21 prohibitions on Islamists and extremist foreigners have been pronounced, 17 against right-wing extremists, but only one against left-wing extremists since 1964.

“And this ban on the internet platform ‘linksunten.indymedia’ could easily be bypassed by people who changed websites.” The Indymedia portal continues to publish letters of resistance promoting arson attacks and attacks on police and political opponents. Therefore, the government must also ban this page, he argued.

Hess said the impression arises that in fact left-wing forces of the SPD in the grand coalition are leading the way, as former spy boss Georg Maassen pointed out. “This must come to an end, we must bring back the the left to the rule of law,” the AFD member said.

In the petition to be tabled on Friday in the Bundestag, the party also called for the creation of an expert commission to monitor the “tolerance and support of left-wing extremism (example ‘antifa’) by sections of society and others institutions” as well as the “marketing of left-wing extremism” in Germany.

“There is hardly any public awareness of the danger of left-wing extremism,” Hess lamented in a conversation with the Junge Freiheit. Media and society downplayed leftist violence and promoted its acceptance. He singled out female politicians Katja Kipping and Katrin Goering-Eckardt as contributors.

In its motion, the AfD called for federal funding guidelines to be amended so that organisations can not receive public money in the future if they “indirectly promote left-wing extremism and call into question the free democratic basic order”.

According to a survey conducted by opinion research institute Insa on behalf of Tichy , 18,5 percent of surveyed migrants meanwhile stated that they were able to “understand” violence against the AfD. But six percent of Germans also expressed their consent when members of this party were physically attacked.

Of the 2 018 respondents, 7,7 percent showed understanding for the violent attacks on AfD members. Violence against left-wing politicians, on the other hand, is tolerates by only 4,7 percent.

Differences show that the approval of violent acts against the AfD among supporters of the SPD at 9,9 percent is particularly high. This is followed by Green voters with seven percent, ahead of those of the Union and the Left Party, each with 6,5 percent.

By contrast, only two percent of the FDP supporters are sympathetic to politically motivated violence. The tolerance for attacks on the anti-immigration party among students is remarkably high. Some 15,8 percent of young academics expressed their sympathy for such acts.

AfD supporters, however, tolerate three percent violence against members of the Left Party. The survey was conducted between 11 and 14 of January. On January 7, the AfD Bundestag member Frank Magnitz was attacked and injured. The police believe it was a politically motivated act.