One year after the last German elections, Angela Merkel’s coalition has seen a drop in popularity following the sacking of BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen (pictured above), said Századvég political analyst István Pócza on national television channel M1.
He said the BfV is considered an iconic part of the German institutional system and has an unquestionable role in safeguarding the country’s security.
Germany is strongly institution-centered and people now see that these institutions are crumbling and this has led to a popularity loss of the coalition parties
Maassen – who has been at the helm of the BfV since 2012 – has been sacked by Minister of Interior Horst Seehofer at the insistence of Chancellor Angela Merkel after Maassen’s controversial remarks regarding television coverage of the Chemnitz protests.
Among Germany’s three coalition parties the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) were the ones who insisted on firing Maassen, while Seehofer, head of the other coalition partner Christian Social Union (CSU) defended him as a competent leader.
A compromise was finally reached where Maassen has been given a position created for him as “special representative for security”.
An Emnid poll for the newspaper Bild am Sonntag showed that 67 percent of those asked no longer believed the three party chiefs still had a common basis of trust, although a narrow majority also rejected the option of new elections.
