Democrazia Cristiana Tedesca

[Johannes Schneider]

Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >
> > It's amazing to me to hear what makes for a political money scandal
> > in Europe. What Kohl did is pretty much out in the open here in the
> > U.S.A.
> In Germany, there are three things making this bigger than the Gore
> scandals.  One is that Kohl still, after months, refuses to say where he
> got the money from on the basis that "he made a promise" to the donors not
> to reveal their names, and he's a man of honor.  It's impossible to
> imagine an American politician making such a stand.  Real old world.
Michael,
sorry to destroy your trust in the old world, but even in Germany no one
accepts this bullshit.
> Secondly, on the basis of that stand, he still wants to run the party --
> he refuses to accept that he's done anything wrong.  This is the same sort
> of thing that drove people apeshit about Clinton -- not that he did it,
> but that he refused to admit it was wrong.
IMHO, thats an aspect, but a minor one.
> And the third thing is that
> his party is completely run by an old guard that have been his people for
> 25 years.  Not one of them wants to say the Old man is wrong even when
> he's being outrageous.  And the entire country suspects -- probably
> rightly -- that every one of them knew about it as well, which makes them
> all guilty with him.
Yesterday the situation has changed in this regard. The CDU Central
Executive asked Kohl either to name names or loose his honorary party
presidency, Kohl immedieatly renounced his party presidency. At the moment
the present CDU leadership around Schäuble and Merkel is trying to blame
Kohl for anything and present themself as the good guys. Though that is a
week line of defence, there is a real conflict between Kohl and his old
guard. In order to save their own skin, they have to press Kohl even more.
> You're right that the soul of this dispute is legalistic.  I think that's
> the key: it's the fury of legalism scorned.  The law itself grew out of an
> earlier funding scandal (the Flick Affair) just like our laws grew out of
> the Watergate scandal.  I think in both cases, much of the fury is is
> driven not just by the revealed disdain that lawmakers have for the law,
> but over just how impotent such laws are revealed to be.  I think what
> drives nice liberals crazy is that each breach reveals that campaign
> reform -- and hence their fundamental faith in the system, which is
> premised the idea that office holders are not for sale -- is impossible.
> And then they pass another set of regulations and forget about it.
To some extent I agree with you, but even liberals did not trust Kohl so
much, so on the left there is not so much surprise as in conservative
circles. Ironically at the center of the affair is the former minister of
interior Kanther, he tried to launder the CDUs own money in Switzerland.
Up to now he was a sort of German Guiliani, praising law and order, calling
for zero tolerance against crime and thus being the hero of the
national-conservtive right wing inside the CDU. At his time as ministers he
introduced tougher laws on money laundering.
Johannes