The former FDP top politician Gerhart Baum has sharply criticized the Corona course of the current party leadership and partly accused her of irresponsibility. Distrust of state intervention is “an indispensable characteristic of liberal politics,” said the 89-year-old former Federal Minister of the Interior (1978-1982) to the editorial network Germany. “But this must not lead to the necessary responsibility for the common good falling by the wayside.”
In the recent state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, the FDP “failed disastrously, also because of its pandemic policy”, as Baum put it. Nevertheless, FDP Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki announced that it would be continued in the fall, he criticized.
The FDP campaigned for the protective measures to be relaxed, “even if it was not responsible, as in autumn 2020, when the hesitation had to be paid for with a lockdown”. The FDP policy was “at times a piece of populism that voters did not follow,” said Baum. “They simply could not imagine that all other democratic parties, all federal states and science were on the wrong track.”
There is increasing debate within the coalition about which corona protection measures should be set for the fall. The FDP in particular is still on the brakes.
