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BERLIN – German chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, the front runner in the race to succeed Angela Merkel, was yesterday forced to apologise after he was caught on camera laughing during a visit to a flood-ravaged town.
Laschet was seen chatting and joking in the background with several people while President Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave a statement expressing sympathy for victims in hard-hit Erftstadt.
At one point in the widely shared clip, Laschet bursts out laughing for several seconds.
“Laschet laughs while the country cries,” said the best-selling Bild daily on its website.
He later apologised on Twitter, saying he was deeply moved by the suffering of flood victims and regretted “the impression that was given by a conversation situation”.
“This was inappropriate and I’m sorry.”
Commentators and politicians were quick to condemn Laschet on social media.
“I’m speechless,” tweeted Lars Klingbeil, secretary-general of the centre-left Social Democrats who govern together with Merkel and Laschet’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc.
“This is all apparently a big joke to (Laschet),” said Maximilian Reimers of the far-left Die Linke opposition party.
“How could he be a chancellor?”
The controversy comes just days after Laschet was widely panned for admonishing a female reporter and calling her a “young lady” during a tense back and forth on the link between the deadly floods and climate change.
“Excuse me, young lady, you don’t change policies just because of one day like this,” said Laschet, who is also premier of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) state, one of the two worst-affected German regions.
The country has counted more than 140 lives lost since Wednesday, while neighbouring Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, too, have been affected by heavy storms.
Erftstadt in NRW has seen major devastation after the extreme rainfall triggered a landslide.
Laschet’s conservatives are leading in opinion polls with 30% support ahead of a September 26 general election that will mark the end of Merkel’s 16 years in power.
The opposition Greens are in second place at around 20%. – AFP, July 18, 2021