Potsdam. Brandenburg’s SPD Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke is once again receiving support in the election campaign from a prominent former CDU politician. After Rita Süssmuth, the former President of the Bundestag, Peter-Michael Diestel is campaigning for Woidke’s election. Diestel was the last GDR Interior Minister and in 1990 the first CDU parliamentary group leader in the Brandenburg state parliament.
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“I will be happy if Dietmar Woidke is also the future Prime Minister and will toast with him with a glass of red wine,” says a letter to the SPD that the MAZ has seen. Diestel adds, however: “But even if the other option is not met, we will laugh and toast with red wine.”
Woidke is currently behind the AfD in polls and only wants to continue if he wins the election, as he reiterated at the MAZ election forum on Wednesday.
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“Fateful elections in Brandenburg”
Diestel writes about Woidke: “An expert in his field, not blessed with quite as warm-hearted a charisma as Manfred Stolpe or Matthias Platzeck, but clever, knowledgeable in agriculture, in domestic politics, but also at home in the culture of the country.”
In Brandenburg, “fateful elections” will take place on September 22, continued Diestel, who works as a lawyer. He stressed that “the Brandenburg prime ministers, even if they belong to the SPD – like my old friend Regine Hildebrandt – are in my closest circle of friends. This includes Dietmar Woidke.”
Diestel mocks Redmann
Diestel apparently has no idea what to do with Woidke’s challenger from the CDU, top candidate Jan Redmann (44), and is mocking him. “I can’t vote for a young man who rides a scooter while drunk and gets caught doing it. This young man’s excuses for this incident are also disrespectful for a future prime minister,” Diestel continues. Redmann was stopped by the police in July with a blood alcohol level of 1.3 per mille while driving an e-scooter in Potsdam at night.
Diestel, now 72, retired from active politics in the 1990s. In April 2021, he resigned from the CDU after Armin Laschet was nominated as candidate for chancellor. “We grew apart,” he explained the move at the time.
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In the 1990 state election, Diestel was the CDU’s top candidate in Brandenburg, but lost the election with 29.4 percent to Stolpe (SPD) and had to go into opposition with his party. He lives in Zislow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Potsdam.
MAZ
