opinion
Can a Bundestag President do that? Bärbel Bas sings on TikTok during her corona isolation and is criticized for it: Such a video is not appropriate for her office. In doing so, she has only done what many citizens would like politicians to do.
Millions of Germans are now familiar with this: the days can get really long in corona isolation. Some people come up with ideas, and not always good ones. Now it has also caught Bärbel Bas (SPD): The President of the Bundestag has been infected with the virus and is in domestic isolation. From there she sends greetings on Tik Tok: In a playback video she imitates the children’s song “I can do that” by Rolf Zuckowski with her lips.
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The appearance has entailed: Is it allowed for a President of the Bundestag – after all, the woman who holds the second highest office in the state – to present herself like this? No, some say. “You just feel really well represented by such a President of the Bundestag,” writes the CDU MP Johannes Steiniger mockingly on Twitter. In fact, the pressure was so great that Bas apologized for the video and deleted the clip. In fact, she only did on Tik Tok what many citizens in the country would like politicians to do: she was one of them.
Bärbel Bas is approachable – why not?
Social media is part of everyday life in Germany – and not just since yesterday. Young people take part in dance challenges. Young adults post holiday pictures on Instagram. Their parents and grandparents put supposedly funny sayings and videos in their Whatsapp status. And Bärbel Bas just felt like singing on TikTok in isolation – why not.
Again and again the call for politicians close to the people, for hands-on politics, is loud. This also means that people in high offices do not just limit themselves to speech manuscripts that have been proofread three times, but also show their personal side. The text that Bas mimicked on TikTok also fits well with her own situation and that of many citizens who are currently struggling with a corona infection: “I’ll definitely come, I’ll definitely come back to that Legs.”
The TikTok video is not suitable for a scandal
You don’t have to find this kind of humor funny, you can even think it’s pretty silly. But the video by Bärbel Bas is really not good for a scandal. It is good for the political culture in Germany when politicians are more approachable, even if that can be a fine line in the social networks: Overly staged appearances are just as unpleasant as amateurish posts.
A lot can go wrong, as with the recent selfie video of Saarland Prime Minister Tobias Hans (CDU) in front of a gas station, in which he complained about rising fuel prices and called for a petrol price brake from the federal government. But even then it was nonsense that the FDP MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann accused him of wanting to imitate the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj with the video.
Funny TikTok videos of the President of the Bundestag during the Ukraine war
Bärbel Bas’s post is no longer available online. “I regret that I expressed myself in this way during this time and in this form from the quarantine,” apologized the President of the Bundestag. In fact, the 53-year-old might have preferred to save her TikTok clip.
Not because of the much-cited “dignity of office” – the term has been stretched in recent months by other members of the Bundestag Presidium. But despite all the basic sympathy for Bas’ easy-going demeanor, funny videos by high-ranking politicians seem a bit out of place when a brutal war is raging in Ukraine and the Ukrainian President is in the Bundestag a few days earlier – in the absence of Bas, who are already there was in isolation – gave a powerful speech.
By the way, no more videos from Bärbel Bas are to be expected for the time being, even if the global political situation should calm down again at some point: she deactivated her profile on TikTok after the harsh criticism.
Source: Stern
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