Gerhard Trabert: Left-wing presidential candidate calls for more help for the poor

Gerhard Trabert: Left-wing presidential candidate calls for more help for the poor

The Mainz doctor Gerhard Trabert has been helping homeless people and refugees for decades. The many injustices caused him to run as a leftist candidate for the office of Federal President, says the 65-year-old.

The left-wing presidential candidate Gerhard Trabert calls for significantly more aid for the poor and the long-term unemployed. The increase in Hartz IV rates by three euros at the beginning of the year was disappointing, said the Mainz social medicine specialist when he presented his application.

He called social inequality in Germany the “mother of all political problems”. The non-party doctor was nominated on Monday by the parliamentary group and party leadership of the Left as a candidate for the office of Federal President.

The election will take place on February 13th. Since incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier has broad support for re-election, Trabert’s candidacy is considered hopeless. Still, the left hopes to mobilize more than its own 71 voices. It’s about “71 plus x”, said parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch. Trabert is “the right candidate at the right time,” said left leader Janine Wissler.

Trabert recalled that he had been working in the medical care of the homeless for 28 years. “I feel that social inequality has increased,” he said. The holes in the social network have become bigger and bigger. The second big topic he mentioned was helping refugees. Nobody can judge what it is like to pull a drowning man out of the Mediterranean from just pictures. Human rights are increasingly being broken by democracies, for example when migrants in Croatia have to live in demolished houses, said Trabert.

All these injustices led him to run for the office of Federal President. “It’s not about profiling myself,” emphasized Trabert. If, contrary to expectations, he should be elected to the highest office of the state, he would, in his own words, first invite homeless people to the official seat of Bellevue Palace and try to continue his previous work in the doctor’s mobile at least every two weeks.

Trabert is a doctor and professor of social medicine in Mainz and founder of the Association for Poverty and Health in Germany. Among other things, he received the Federal Cross of Merit for his work. In the federal election in 2021, he had applied in vain for a direct mandate for the Left. He said he had always been non-party and that he wanted to stay that way.

Source From: Stern

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