Hard times have been confronting Franz Müntefering, the 69-year-old leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), since his vote-losing party started its election campaign for the forthcoming federal elections in September. State elections in Bavaria in 2008 were a warning shot for the party, which got only 18.6 percent, its worst result in many years. Recently held local elections in four other states did not yield expected results at all and European elections in early June were a hair-raising nightmare for Germany’s oldest party. And now, since March, a pornography scandal around Jorg Tauss, SPD-member of the federal parliament since 1994, has thrown the party’s public image and popularity into a deep puddle. But this may change now; at least just a little. Tauss first resigned from all positions held in the parliamentary group, later from the party and has now become a member of the Pirate Party (Piratenpartei). It is the first time for the little and unknown party supporting free and unlimited access to media and internet to be represented in the federal parliament.
“Party fellows depending on a good and safe positioning on the candidate list were hesitant to come too close to him as they feared the effects of his damaged reputation” said Irmgard Tauss, spouse of the scandal-shaken parliamentarian Jorg Tauss, who has been fighting a legal battle since prosecutors found videos and media material containing child pornography in his office and private apartments in March. The 56-year-old deputy from Karlsruhe and secretary general of the local SPD-administration in Baden-Wurttemberg rejected accusations and defended the burdening material with his position as spokesman for research and media policy of the SPD parliamentary group, which has been dealing with the legal fight against pornography since many years.
In late June, at a time when Tauss was still a member of the SPD parliamentary group, his party voted in favour of a bill that sets remarkable limits on the use of the internet and blocks access to potentially harmful web pages. Tauss accused party seniors and lawmakers of opening Pandora’s Box and creating an infrastructure of censor which offers technical incentives for China and Iran and could be used for other purposes as well. In a press statement released immediately after his resignation the former labour union activist, who has been member of the Social Democrats for almost 40 years, emphasized the misleading developments in SPD’s legal and interior security policies and discredited the bill as an action violating civil rights and the constitutionally protected principle of commensurability.
The Pirate Party, founded in 2006 as the German link of an international movement that rejects patents on goods and human beings, calls for more transparency in public space and supports individual rights, won 0.9 percent of votes in the European elections. Backed by 7.1 percent of voters the party under its leader Christian Engstrom had a landslide victory in June’s EP elections in Sweden. Party seniors welcomed Tauss’ decision, and Tauss will use the remaining few months until the elections in September to fight against censorship and internet blocking regulations and for the protection of civil rights. The probability of a Swedish victory for Germany’s Pirates in upcoming elections is not very high, but at least for once in foreseeable history the party made it to the Bundestag, the federal parliament in Berlin.
