politics news or soap opera script? you decide.

[ratcreature]

Some days the politics news (the linked article is in German) read entirely too much like a soap opera script. You see, currently the local government here (i.e. city and bundesland government which coincides in Hamburg), is a right-wing coalition of the CDU (christian democratic union) with some recently founded far-right "law and order" party, that gained popularity with the promise to curb crime and drug dealers through repression. Anyway, one of the government officials of said party was involved in a scandal because he gave his significant other a government job without following due process. So the mayor (from the CDU) then asked him to resign, and in turn the senator of the interior (cabinet members here are traditionally called senators) threatened to "out" the mayor's (alleged) homosexual affair with the senator of justice, claiming it was a double standard if the mayor gave his SO a cabinet job, but dismisses the other for that. This allegation of course led the mayor a) to deny said affair, claiming the senator of justice was just a good long time friend of 25 years who happens to live in an apartment owned by the mayor (with paying rent no less) and b) to dismiss the senator of the interior too. Well, it's good riddance for both of them (quite frankly I think what the right-wing coalition did with the police and "security", especially how demonstrators are now treated here, is plainly awful), but couldn't they have managed it to a script that was less like a daily soap?! I mean, okay, I have long since given up on any notions of dignity of office (it's not like it's the first scandal about misconduct or corruption, or just limited to the recent right-wing government either), but really.