SPD parliamentary member Manuel Gava’s drug scandal has also rattled the federal party. “Yes, it may be that we should have noticed his problems earlier,” SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken said to the “New Osnabrück Times” (Sunday edition).
“We all should have given one another more attention afterwards,” she acknowledged. Gava had recently admitted to regularly consuming cocaine and withdrew his candidacy for the Bundestag election a few days prior.
Esken referred to an increasing hardness in everyday politician life: “The burden and the rate of attacks always increase. The attacks one feels exposed to become more personal. Many certainly struggle more than in earlier times,” she told the NOZ.
As a consequence, the SPD chairwoman demanded more vigilance: “It is important that we also maintain awareness in the sometimes brutal politician’s life, recognize the limits of what we can endure, and do not overstep them. And that we also show from the outside that we are human beings.