BERLIN – A senior figure in the party whose departure from Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition three weeks ago put Germany on the road to an early election resigned Friday in a furor over an internal document discussing how the party could leave the government, a presentation whose title referred to “D-Day.”
Bijan Djir-Sarai of the pro-business Free Democrats said he was quitting as general secretary, the official responsible for day-to-day political strategy and election planning. He said he was “taking the political responsibility in order to head off damage to my credibility and that of the Free Democrats.”
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The affair threatens to complicate further the Free Democrats' campaign for an election in which polls already suggest they risk falling short of the 5% support needed to keep any seats in parliament.
Scholz fired Christian Lindner, the Free Democrats' leader, as finance minister on Nov. 6 as a long-running dispute in his three-party coalition over how to revitalize Germany's stagnant economy came to a head. The Free Democrats quit the government, leaving Scholz without a parliamentary majority.
Scholz plans to call a confidence vote on Dec. 16. He is expected to lose, paving the way for an election on Feb. 23.
Scholz and Lindner have traded blame for the collapse of the coalition, a combination of the chancellor's center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the Free Democrats that had long been notorious for infighting.
After the coalition collapsed, German media reported on an internal strategy document which they said set out plans by the Free Democrats to end the government. On Nov. 18, Djir-Sarai denied that the term “D-Day” — a reference to the Allied landings in France in 1944 that helped liberate Europe from Nazi Germany's rule — had been used.
But on Thursday, the Free Democrats released what they said was a working document drawn up by a lower-level official on questions of how the party could communicate a possible departure from the government. It is headed “D-Day process scenario and measures” and contains a reference to the “beginning of the open battle” as one stage in the communication effort.
That language drew criticism even from within the party.
Djir-Sarai said in his brief resignation statement that he had not known of the internal document at the time of his denial and had unwittingly given false information. He apologized.
The party said the paper was first drawn up on Oct. 24 and was last updated on Nov. 5, the version it released.
The lower-ranking official who the party said originally created the document, Carsten Reymann, also resigned.
The general secretary of Scholz's Social Democrats, Matthias Miersch, told German news agency dpa that Djir-Sarai's resignation was a “sacrifice” meant to “divert responsibility” from Lindner. He said that “the decisive question remains: what role did Christian Lindner himself play in these plans?”
Lindner said he hadn't been aware of the “draft” document and wouldn't have approved it, but it had been necessary to think through a possible departure from the coalition in light of its internal disputes and Germany's “gridlock.” He said it was clear the Free Democrats would have had to leave without an “economic turnaround.”
Anyone who makes a scandal out of that is only pursuing “power and party interests,” he said in a statement.