Olaf Scholz: Wait and remain Chancellor – a portrait

Who would have thought that Olaf Scholz, a man with the charisma of an administrative assistant, made it into the Federal Chancellery? Already in the 2021 federal election, he was quite surprising. Now he wants to stay in office. And while all of Germany has been able to observe in recent years that he did not get the dispute in the traffic light coalition under control, he vehemently denied the image of a lack of manager.

Sit out and wait. Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) has perfected this in his last years in office. And that probably cost him in 1998. When his SPD counter-candidate Gerhard Schröder moves into the Chancellery, the lawyer Olaf Scholz also made it into the Bundestag for the first time. In May 2001 he said goodbye from Berlin towards Hamburg: the office of the interior senator calls. As such, he approves the forced breeding in Hamburg. When the alleged drug dealer and rejected asylum seeker Achidi John defends himself against the procedure in December 2001, he suffers a cardiac arrest and dies days later. Scholz is no longer the interior senator, but he is responsible for the procedure. However, nothing stays on him politically and legally.

In 2002 Scholz moved back to the Bundestag and became Federal Minister of Labor under Chancellor Angela Merkel at the end of 2007. In the 2009 Bundestag election, the SPD loses its government participation and Scholz thus loses its ministerial post. In the new Bundestag he takes a seat on the opposition bank until Hamburg calls again. As the top candidate of the SPD Hamburg, he wins the citizens’ election in February 2011 and becomes the first citizen of the Hanseatic city.

In the largest tax scandal in the Federal Republic, the CUM-EX stock transactions, financial actors pushed stocks with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) dividend entitlement back and forth in a confusion.

In the end, taxes that had not been paid were reimbursed. Through tax fraud, which had its high phase from 2006 to 2011, the state and thus the general public were cheated by a double-digit billion-euro amount. Also involved in it: Hamburg’s private bank MM Warburg & Co. and its then boss Christian Olearius. The recipient Scholz 2016 and 2017 three times. The background was impending millions in Hamburg’s financial administration due to the wrongly reimbursed capital income taxes. After the first meetings, the Hamburg financial administration waived the recovery of 47 million euros. Another 43 million euros were only requested in 2017 at the federal government.

What did Scholz and Olearius discuss? Scholz can’t remember that. Before committees of investigation, he only confirms the dates based on his calendar. However, he denies any political influence. “I worked my whole political life for a fair tax system,” said Scholz. For him it is clear that tax evasion and design models such as Cum-Ex or Cum-Cum “consistently be enlightened and persecuted”.

At the suggestion of Chancellor Merkel, Scholz agreed to the organization of the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. Shortly before the summit, he says: “Be unscathed: we can guarantee security.” : “We also organize the port birthday every year. There will be people who will be surprised on July 9 that the summit is already over.”

It turned out very differently. Hamburg has experienced the most difficult riots since the harbor street riots: 500 police officers and an unknown number of demonstrators are injured, business looted, cars lit up and streets are lit. Despite the dozens of investigative proceedings against police forces, Scholz says: “There was no police force, that is a denunciation that I decidedly rejected.” You don’t have to be a left -wing extremist to see it differently than Scholz.

Scholz has been in the Federal Chancellery since December 2021. What will it be remembered? At the very beginning, he was highlighted by his “Time Wende” speech on the Ukraine War and the overcoming of the energy crisis after the cap of Russian gas deliveries. Scholz steadily refuses to deliver the Ukraine Taurus marching missile attacked by Russia. And are now in the negative area. The catch -up is still a long time coming up three weeks before the Bundestag election. In the election campaign, Scholz tries to score with his government experience – as Federal Minister, Mayor of Hamburg and Chancellor. Does that convince a majority? Wait.