The Empty Seats Story

On rare (very rare) occasions, I'll watch the live feed of the Bundestag in Berlin 'in action'.  So there are usually three layouts (my word for it).

The first layout is the 'all-hands-on-deck' situation where some big talk will occur (usually with Merkel and the more dramatic folks making some speech).

The second layout is where you look across the screen and note that about 10-percent of the seats are empty (usually Merkel is absent).

Then the last scenario is where you've got over 50-percent of the seats vacant, and while there are still speeches going on.....you can figure out of the roughly 700 folks who get paid to be there....a fair number have just slipped off.

So I noticed this morning off of ARD (public TV, Channel One) a short piece talking about 'mandatory duty' for SPD members to attend.

The party chief (Nahles) has drafted up a paper (not fact yet)....saying that the SPD folks are divided now into three groups.  It'll occur after the summer pause apparently.

The three groups?  "The first group is in plenary service, the second group is on call and can reach the plenary within 15 minutes of being alerted, the third group only has to come to the plenary on special occasions (mutton jump, roll call vote, special agenda items)".

Why force mandatory attendance?  Well....the AfD Party has started to put out pictures to show a dramatic situation where the vast number of seats are empty.  On the scale of dramatics....it does present an interesting case. 

The thing here is that you can't say that it's always been this way.  But regular people sitting at home tend to notice things like this, and then some idiot will bring the pay-scale for Bundestag members, and that everyone ought to be showing up for 'work'.

Part of the problem as well (I suspect) is that when the Bundestag was back in Bonn....there wasn't any diversions on their landscape.  Once they moved to Berlin.....there are a thousand things that could come up and you'd walk out of the building, take the subway and have a three-hour lunch with some lobbyists on the Grosser Muggelsee (a lake on the eastside). 

Eventually, I could imagine some German anti-politician group coming up and wanting some kind of pay-cut for folks who don't attend the majority of open discussions.