Internal CDU meeting becomes public: More Twitter brings less transparency – opinion

Have you always wanted to be present at closed get-togethers between the parties? Experience live what the powerful are discussing behind the scenes? Now is your chance! What is happening in the internal meetings of the CDU can currently be followed in minute detail on Twitter. However, this is not only bad for the image of the party, which cannot even agree on a uniform approach to dealing with the press – it paradoxically also leads to less transparency in politics.

In the night from Monday to Tuesday, the CDU board met digitally to discuss the candidacy for chancellor. Every minute detail was tweeted live by journalists, from technical breakdowns to funny heckling.

Last week, CDU / CSU parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus called the MPs who released information from internal meetings “comrades-in-arms” – which promptly landed on Twitter, just like Brinkhaus’ outrage that his outrage ended up on Twitter. An absurd spectacle that shows everything possible, but not seriousness.

Statements were only partially made public

This week the once so wild Greens proved that it can be done completely differently, who held tight until Annalena Baerbock was made known as a candidate.

If all the details are anyway carried out, the CDU should hold its meetings in public right away, that would be consistent and the politicians would no longer be able to pick out their distribution channels themselves. Abbreviated statements would also be avoided, such as the one that Daniel Günther, Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein, had said that the basis was “at Söder”.

He did that, but followed up with the words that the board should nevertheless stick to its pro-Laschet stance. In the numerous blogs, this second message arrived much later.

Performance for the grassroots instead of arguments

So far, the CDU has rarely advocated more transparency. The Union has always blocked motions from the Greens and the Left to make committee meetings of the Bundestag public. The live ticker from internal meetings leads to the opposite anyway: The really important conversations are shifting to ever smaller, more exclusive circles, the legendary “back rooms”.

More confidentiality, on the other hand, would also lead to more honesty. Numerous studies show that people behave differently when they know that they are being watched. Politicians: inside anyway. If every statement from confidential meetings gets out, they are more likely to perform for the constantly reading base than to express their real opinion and deal with the matter – this is understandable, but in the long run affects the democratic exchange.