BERLIN, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- German Social Democrat (SPD) leader Andrea Nahles has announced on Thursday that emergency talks will take place in her party next week in response to an angry backlash against the promotion of former intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen.
Speaking to press in Munich, Nahles admitted that a recent decision by the federal government to transfer Maassen from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to a more senior post as secretary of state had sparked a heated debate within the SPD.
Earlier, the party, which forms a "grand coalition" government with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), threatened to return to the opposition benches unless chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) ensured that Maassen was sacked as president of the BfV.
Maassen is at the center of an escalating national controversy in Germany for questioning the authenticity of video footage showing right-wing extremists chasing foreigners in Chemnitz. In doing so, the intelligence agency chief directly contradicted Merkel and local security officers on the issue, only to backtrack on the public statements again in a subsequent report.
Although Maassen's promotion was justified by Nahles and the leadership of the CDU and CSU as a pragmatic compromise to preserve the continued existence of the "grand coalition", the personnel decision has provoked outrage among many SPD members.
Maassen will now receive a pay rise while continuing to report to interior minister and CSU leader Horst Seehofer, a staunch supporter of the former BfV president.
Nahles argued on Thursday that confronted with the protection offered by Seehofer to Maassen, she had been forced to make a difficult decision which would still enable the SPD to achieve its desired removal of the intelligence officer from the BfV. She emphasized, however, that this did not mean that she agreed with the decision of Seehofer to offer Maassen a better post in his own ministry and understood resulting criticism.
For a growing number of senior SPD politicians, the time has now come for the party to either resist the unusual personnel reshuffle or turn its back on the increasingly unpopular "grand coalition" entirely.
"I urge all SPD members in the governing cabinet to vote against Maassen's nomination," SPD vice-president Natascha Kohnen told the German press agency (dpa).
Similarly, SPD youth organization (Jusos) leader Kevin Kuehnert argued that the SPD could not afford to allow itself to be mocked by Seehofer. According to Kuehnert, it was already high time for the German Social Democrats to quit Merkel's fourth ruling cabinet in order to prevent further losses of voter support.
