Journey

In a state based on the rule of law, fundamental trust is institutionally-secured through fundamental rights.

Heribert Prantl, by God no friend of the AfD, the chief commentator of the Suddeutsche Zeitung, has written, and spoken, some remarkable words on this. I quote with the permission of the President:

“Fundamental rights are called fundamental rights because they form the foundation of our lives. Fundamental rights are there precisely for times of emergency. If they are brushed aside in times of crisis and emergency then they are worth nothing and then we can forget them.“

Heribert Prantl, not Alexander Gauland.

The government’s Infection Protection Law is the greatest restriction of fundamental rights in the history of the Federal Republic. If we continue with Herr Prantl’s line of thinking, it means we can forget our fundamental rights.

These people are standing up for their fundamental rights. and they do not need to be monitored by the domestic intelligence agency.

The mistrust, ladies and gentlemen, will explode. You can see this in the streets, you can see this in the aggression that you can sense everywhere, And you can see this in many cities, and today also outside the Bundestag.

Many citizens have existential concerns and questions. They want to know how things are going to proceed, when it comes to their shops, bars and cultural sites, and in light of the fundamental rights that have been suspended, they are worried about their freedom.

Corona app, contact tracing, digital health checks, indirect requirement to vaccinate: these are all symptoms of an approaching smart health-dictatorship.

People are asking themselves for example whether there will be negative consequences if you do not vaccinate, or if you do not want to be registered. Will you in the future be prevented from going into restaurants, or playing sports, or going abroad? Anyone who asks a question like this is called a conspiracy theorist.

But in China, this type of totalitarian surveillance is already a fact, and we do not want to go down that path.

The FAZ, who I don’t think would be offended if we called them “Close to the government”, tweeted: “The high corona numbers in many western countries raise the unsettling question as to whether open societies are less well-suited to reacting to global threats than authoritarian systems”. Are they hinting at something?

In an expert statement, the representative of the Chair for Public Law at Ruhr-University Bochum told the Health Committee of the Bundestag, quote:

“The planned paragraph 28a of the Infection Protection Law does not satisfy the requirements of parliamentary scrutiny and legal certainty. No consideration at all has been given to how it will impact the fundamental rights of the affected parties. It is clearly a unilateral attempt to legitimise the approach taken during the corona epidemic.“

That is what the expert statement in the Health Committee said.

“No consideration at all”, that is indeed the case, since what is it other than excessive and unbalanced, when the inviolability of the home is disregarded, when the Chancellor, in all seriousness, says children should now be allowed to meet only one friend? Dear friends, do we now have the Plaggue in this country, Frau Chancellor?

Ladies and gentlemen, what is a “a pandemic of national concern”? The person who defines this can now introduce a state of emergency. It appears that Herr Drosten is the current German sovereign, and the arguments of other virologists and epidemiologists who speak out against the lockdown are brushed aside.

For example the paper by Herr Streeck and the Association of State Health Insurance Doctors, that many doctor’s organisations have also signed. The signatories are calling for a nationwide, uniform “traffic light” system, which would show at a glance what the current situation is on both a national and country level. They believe in regulations rather than prohibitions, and in self responsibility rather than a nanny state. They call for good hygiene practices to be promoted instead of shutting businesses down, and for at-risk groups to be protected through special measures.

We support sensible ideas like these, just as we oppose the emergency measures, which are ruinous both to the economy and to inter-personal relationships.

We will have to live with the virus for many more months, and the citizens know that. Most of them are dealing with the situation in a responsible manner, as are bar and restaurant owners, performing artists, and concert promoters. They have registered all visitors, reduced their capacities and developed hygiene strategies, and, despite declining revenue, spent money doing all this.

That they are now being shut down is intolerable and amounts to dictatorship.

I have stood here before and said, and I will not tire of repeating it, the sovereign of this country is the German people, represented through this parliament. Only this parliament can decide upon restrictions of fundamental rights, having first considered all arguments on an exact, limited timescale. You haven’t even specified that: an exact, limited time.

Ladies and gentlemen, the members of the Bundestag are elected by the people. When the government presents these members with faits accomplis it goes against the spirit of democracy and the constitution. For this reason alone, we reject this law, and Herr Buschmann, not because we don’t want this parliament (or) because we don’t want democracy, but rather because we are obviously in this country the only democratic group.

Thank you. Hopefully the other groups have learned something, for once. Herr President, thank you.