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Photo: DPA

Wowi survives vote despite BER debacle

Published: 12 Jan 13 11:48 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20130112-47289.html

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit was triumphant on Saturday after he won a vote of confidence in the city senate, allowing him to remain in his position despite his disastrous handling of the capital's delayed airport project.

“I had no doubt that the governing coalition would stand,” said Wowereit following the vote on Saturday morning. “Anything else would have been fatal.”

The motion by members of the opposition Green party and Pirate party, which had it passed would have forced Social Democrat (SPD) Wowereit and his ruling coalition from office, was defeated in the city Senate by 85 votes for to 62 against.

The vote came less than a week after Wowereit resigned from the Berlin airport consortium supervisory board following the news last Monday that the repeatedly delayed airport will not open until 2014.

Wowereit has blamed the problems of the capital's blighted airport project on construction and technology failures. He assured the Senate that members of the airport consortium supervisory board would be made to feel personal consequences in the next weeks.

He declined to name a revised date for the opening, saying it would be “negligent” given the current situation. However, he said he was confident the airport would be in operation by the end of his term as mayor in 2016.

DPA/DAPD/The Local/jlb

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

13:00 January 12, 2013 by pepsionice
I would say this....you can't blame Wowi much for the whole mess, but as a political figure....he really tried to get traction out of a on-time opening. He was going to cut ribbons, shuffle around bottles of fancy bubbles, and claim as much credit as possible. The end result? He looked stupid.

What happened? You marry up these multi-year, massive projects, with contractor after contractor. You would expect some audit team at the top level reviewing each weeks work and making sure that spec's all work. That's simply not happening on the bulk of German major infrastructural projects. One of the best screw-ups was the KMC Center at Ramstein, where the escalator finally arrived for installation.....personally crafted for this order....and it was roughly a meter too short. There's probably a 100k Euro wasted on the first attempt and the re-order. Toss in several months to get around to the next installation attempt.
14:28 January 13, 2013 by raandy
"construction and technology failures" more like you did not hire a General Contractor to oversee this project instead you allowed idiots like Wowi and his ilk politicans to pack the supervisory board all of whom have zero knowledge of engineering construction.Then to add insult Wowi turns tail ;-) and runs for the door.

How does this man get a vote of confidence?

Tear the airport down to the ground, hire a qualified construction engineering firm to oversee the project and start all over, and most of all keep the dimwitted politicians away.
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