The Scholz record: A list full of untruths, lies and disappointments

Berliner Zeitung The Scholz record: A list full of untruths, lies and disappointments Paul Hoffmann • 7 hours • 3 minutes reading time Things are not going well for Olaf Scholz. In a recent survey by the YouGov opinion research institute, just six percent of citizens think he has a chance of returning to the chancellor's office. In a survey by Insa, he is only ranked 19th out of the 20 most popular politicians. Even Hubert Aiwanger is above him. And in the RTL/ntv trend barometer, his SPD has less than half as much approval as the Union, at 16 percent. His chancellorship also reveals a rather mixed record. It is a list of untruths, lies and unfulfilled promises. Last Sunday, Scholz was a guest on talk show host Caren Miosga. There, among other things, he launched a new attack on former finance minister Christian Lindner and his FDP. He claimed that they wanted to cut pensions to finance aid to Ukraine, something that would never happen under him. "We have now reached the point where, even according to the plans of the former finance minister, it would have been a matter of financing this through pension cuts; money that is taken away from the municipalities and the modernization of our country," said the chancellor. The FDP was appalled and described this claim as simply false. Scholz alone had linked the issues of pensions and Ukraine. The liberals had only discussed adjusting the pension level, which would mean that pension increases could be lower in the future. There was never any talk of cuts. Germany wants to be climate neutral by 2045. To achieve this, costly investments are necessary in many areas. "Due to the high level of investment in climate protection, Germany will be able to achieve growth rates for some time, as last happened in the 1950s and 1960s," said Scholz in March of last year in an interview with the Lausitzer Rundschau, looking forward to a prosperous future for the German economy. But the truth is different. Economic growth is hardly in sight, and an economic miracle is certainly not on the cards, and in many places large investments in the future are nowhere to be found. High energy costs are also fueling fears of deindustrialization in the country. In October 2023, Scholz graced the front page of Der Spiegel with a serious look. Above it in yellow letters was a quote from the Chancellor that was to cause quite a stir. "We finally have to deport people on a large scale," it said. Not much has happened since then, however. In the first three quarters of the year, 23,610 of 38,328 planned deportations failed - or 61.6 percent. The NOZ recently reported this, citing a request from Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) to the federal government. Wagenknecht then accused Scholz of "breaking his word on the subject of deportations". He had "promised a year ago that the law would finally apply again and that those required to leave the country would be consistently deported". The result was "a pipe dream". Scholz was also unable to keep the traffic light coalition's promise on migration as such. "We are committed to our humanitarian responsibility to protect and want to regulate the procedures for flight and migration," wrote the SPD, Greens and FDP in their coalition agreement on page 6. The truth is that cities and municipalities are still overloaded today. After Christian Lindner was sacked as finance minister, a successor was quickly found. Jörg Kukies took over the job. An obvious choice, as the ex-Goldman Sachs man was most recently State Secretary in the Chancellery. What is interesting, however, is the point in time at which Kukies is said to have first heard about his new role. "Specifically, one day before the coalition committee on Wednesday, we talked abstractly for the first time about the fact that this could be a possibility," he recently told the Süddeutsche Zeitung at an economic summit. This means that the Chancellor was already planning for the time after the traffic light coalition, when he still claimed to want to save it. This fits with Lindner's statement that the Chancellor deliberately brought about the break. The FDP man spoke of a staged dismissal. Whether he was not planning the same thing with his 18-page "divorce paper" shortly before the end is another question.