Fraktionswechsel im Stadtrat – Thomas Kierschke schließt sich der CDU an (English)

Council member Thomas Kierschke joins the CDU group in the Winsen city council. Winsen's SPD is not surprised by this and has expected this step after months of inactivity, but having completed further training to become an employee in local government.

On Tuesday, 05.08.2020 Thomas Kierschke announced his change to the CDU group to the Winsener SPD by mail. "I am not surprised by this step, I actually expected it much earlier. He had been looking for the active back room exchange with the CDU for quite some time. Unfortunately, we can only speculate about possible motives," said local association and faction leader Benjamin Qualmann.

Background: Already in autumn 2019 the parliamentary group member has gone underground, has since then not attended any meeting of the city council and has completely stopped working. "At the beginning of 2020, we tried several times in many ways to find out how things would go on and whether and how he would like to continue to exercise his mandate in the Winsen (Luhe) city council - also with regard to his professional reorientation. Unfortunately there was no reaction until last week."

Just like his colleague Cemil Dilek, who is now bringing the mandate to the Greens / Left Party, Thomas Kirschke was elected to the city council only via the SPD party list, just like Delik, with an extremely moderate result. Therefore, the Winsener SPD expects the return of the city council mandate after the change of the parliamentary group. Qualmann demands: "At the beginning of this year, the 2020 budget seemed to allow for a good, selective and more trusting cooperation with the CDU. Of course, we now expect the CDU to recommend that he be given back his mandate.

According to the Greens / Left Party, it is difficult to understand why the CDU now also offers itself as a catchment basin. "Without a direct mandate, it is a question of fairness to then resign from the city council and leave the mandate to the successor on the party list," Qualmann reiterates the SPD's moral compass.

In the end, however, what counts for the SPD today is already looking ahead to the local elections in 2021: "We already have many new faces who want to get involved in the city council for their home town of Winsen from September 2021 and there will certainly be many more by then," says the deputy chairwoman of the local association, Dominique Theresa Sechi, happily. "The two members who left the SPD faction would therefore have had rather bad cards on an attractive list position with the SPD for 2021".