Berlin gets a new mayor after three attempts

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The 50-year-old Kai Wegner only received enough votes on Thursday in the third ballot to succeed Franziska Giffey. In the secret ballot he received 86 yes votes, exactly as many as the coalition partners CDU and SPD together have in deputies. On the third ballot, 70 MPs voted against Wegner. The right-wing populist AfD faction then declared that it had voted for Wegner on the third ballot. Wegner accepted the election.

Wegner failed on the first two ballots. He initially received 71 yes votes, in the second attempt 79 votes. An absolute majority of 80 votes was required for the first two ballots. The new Berlin coalition of the CDU and SPD has 86 votes and the opposition of the Greens, the Left and AfD has 73. The CDU and SPD in Berlin will each receive five senators in the future.

The dramatic vote evoked memories of the election of former mayor Klaus Wowereit in 2006. The SPD politician was only re-elected on the second ballot with the narrowest majority of one vote.

For the third ballot, the CDU and SPD had voted against a motion by the Greens and the Left Party to postpone the election of the ruling mayor. The AfD abstained from voting. After Wegner failed twice, politicians from the CDU and SPD blamed each other for the election drama.

The former MP Wegner heads a black-red coalition of CDU and social democrats that emerged after the re-elections in February. Wegner is the first governing mayor from the ranks of the CDU after Eberhard Diepgen, who held this office until June 2001. The new coalition of CDU and SPD replaces the alliance of SPD, Left and Greens that has governed Berlin since 2016.

Unlike the SPD, there were no public discussions about the black-red alliance among the Berlin Christian Democrats. At a party congress of the CDU, the coalition agreement was adopted without a vote against, while the approval of the SPD in a member vote was significantly lower at 54.3 percent. Wegner’s predecessor, Giffey, will take over as economics senator in the new senate.

The CDU emerged as the strongest party in February’s re-election, relegating the SPD and the Greens to their places. Giffey was then willing to give up her Black-Red Coalition post, which she probably would have kept if Red-Green-Red had continued. The vote in February had become necessary because of numerous organizational breakdowns in the regular parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2021.

(SDA)

Source: Blick