(Adnkronos) – The chronicle of the events in Munich has forcefully broken into the political confrontation in view of the renewal of the Bundestag on February 23: the attack that caused 36 injuries in a city in turmoil for the start of the Security Conference has brought the issue of migrants back to the center of the debate. The four main chancellor candidates – Olaf Scholz (SPD), Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU), Robert Habeck (Greens) and Alice Weidel (AfD) – answered questions from the public for ZDF yesterday, questioned on various topics addressed in recent months.
Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about the attack that took place yesterday in Munich, where a 24-year-old Afghan man drove his car into a crowd gathered for a union demonstration, injuring 36 people, some of them seriously. “In my hometown of Solingen, some people were brutally murdered and seriously injured while we were celebrating a party in the square last year,” a woman said.
“This is not an isolated incident, today we hear about Munich again; you can’t even list all the cities that follow one another. We are afraid that this will continue. I am very worried, for my grandchildren, my children, my family and my friends. And your government, including you, has a responsibility to lead us safely, so my question is: if you don’t make major changes, aren’t you morally complicit in every single murder that’s happened so far?”.
Scholz responded by referring to the new rules introduced by his government on the matter and underlining his personal concern in the face of these facts.
The issue of immigration and the rules to regulate it was the spark that triggered the recent political crisis in the Bundestag, with the CDU making use of the parliamentary support of Alice Weidel’s AfD to get its proposals approved, putting at risk in the eyes of the other political forces the ‘sanitary cordon’ erected around the far-right party. A choice also contested by Angela Merkel, who in a rare stance in the election campaign came out into the open to harshly criticize Merz.
Since then, the outgoing chancellor has repeatedly reiterated that the CDU has lost credibility and that it is not possible to predict with certainty which parties it will ally with after the vote in the event of victory. For his part, Friedrich Merz insists on reiterating that he does not intend to ally himself with Alternative for Germany if the vote confirms the advantage guaranteed to him by the polls. He did so last night, making it clear that a coalition with the AfD is out of the question. “We made only one firm decision: not with you!” he declared, addressing Weidel directly.
