“A prime minister is there for everyone.” He must keep an eye on the general interest, think long-term and, if necessary, assert his convictions against resistance. He should not seek short-term, tactical advantages for the sake of the headline. But it should be clear which party he belongs to.
This is how Tarek Al-Wazir imagines it, the top candidate of the Hessian Greens, who has previously been the deputy head of government. In an interview with the Rhein-Main editorial team of the FAZ on Monday, five weeks before the state elections, Al-Wazir was optimistic that this time he himself could ultimately be the one who is responsible for “that everything works”. A current survey commissioned by the FAZ and Radio FFH by the Mannheim research group Wahlen called Al-Wazir “encouraging”. In the so-called Sunday question, the Union is ahead with a share of the vote of more than 30 percent. The SPD and Greens are located by the pollsters in the order of 20 percent.
The fact that, given the appearance of the traffic light government at the beginning of the hot phase of the election campaign in Hesse, his party can currently count on around 18 percent shows that the population can distinguish between the different levels. In a national comparison of all Greens state associations, the Hessian one is in second place after Baden-Württemberg.
Al-Wazir: Black-Green work on the best of terms
The state minister responsible for business, energy, transport and housing sees his task in the weeks before the election as making it clear to people that October 8th is not about the federal government, but about “extremely important” decisions made in Hesse would have to be. So far, however, the fifty-two-year-old has not seen a major overarching theme in the election campaign.
When asked, Al-Wazir emphasizes that the black-green coalition is working together on the best of terms. It has been shown that voters do not appreciate “when one governs against the other”. For example, the Federal Council passed the Skilled Immigration Act introduced by the traffic light government without the votes of Hesse. Because the black-green coalition agreement states that you abstain in the state chamber if you have different opinions. “I would actually have liked to agree,” said Al-Wazir.
Preserving Helmut Kohl’s legacy
There are also different opinions on the question of mobility. Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) wants to improve the combustion engine. The Greens countered this backward-looking “nostalgic transfiguration” with electromobility and a forward-looking transformation – without bans, by the way. Al-Wazir also rejects the demand for the nationwide introduction of migration controls at the European internal borders. It contradicts the legacy of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU). Freedom of movement is a great asset.
He will not change his mind on this question any more than on the subject of wind power. In the meantime, the CDU has given up railing against “pinwheel monsters”. And a positive change can also be seen in the population in the Rhine-Main area. “If the wind turns even in the Rheingau, then it turns all over the country.”
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Municipal heating planning, which has only recently been discussed in Berlin, was anchored in law in Hesse a year ago. Al-Wazir does not share the concern that in a few years the electricity supply will not be sufficient. However, the expansion of renewable energies and the grid would have to continue. Al-Wazir named childcare as another challenge over the next few years.
That applies to the minister, owner of a semi-detached house in Offenbach-Rumpenheim, as well as to the relationship between his hometown and Frankfurt. The politician is very sympathetic to the plans of a Hamburg developer to build a dormitory in the skeleton of the Siemens high-rise buildings on the Kaiserlei, into which students from both communities could move. The existing separation of Frankfurt and Offenbach is local color, according to Al-Wazir. The two cities belonged together.
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