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| Olaf Lehne MdL Düsseldorf |
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| 27.08.2010, 10:50 Uhr | |
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| Praktikant aus Südafrika im Abgeordnetenbüro von Olaf Lehne Christian Claasen aus dem südafrikanischen Kapstadt berichtet von seiner Zeit als Praktikant im Abgeordnetenbüro von Olaf Lehne: My name is Christian Claassen, and on the 7th of June 2010 I was given the opportunity of undertaking a 2 month long internship in the office of Mr. Olaf Lehne.
At the time, I was a 20 year old second year student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, studying a Bachelor degree with majors in both Politics and History. I had earlier taken a decision to spend my June/July semester holidays in Germany, as I am a South African/German dual citizen, having wanted to visit friends and family. I came to the conclusion that this would be an equally good opportunity to conduct an internship at a non-state or state organization, in order to gain some insight into possible career fields. Securing a place however, turned out to be easier said than done.
After a few dozen e-mails to various organizations in Nordrhine-Westfalen, Mr. Lehne’s office was the only one kind enough to reply with a positive answer, inviting me to an initial meeting to discuss further possibilities. To my relief, Mr. Lehne’s PA, after explaining to me that the political situation in the NRW Landtag was less than favorable at that time, agreed to an internship for the duration of my stay in Germany.
During my first week at the Landtag, not really knowing what to expect over the course of my internship, I was surprised to find out that buying flowers, chocolates and postage stamps and collecting party pins were part of the duties having to be carried out by a member of parliament’s office. So I faced the daunting task of involuntarily exploring a foreign city and having to make use of a foreign concept of public transport. Although having made many a wrong turn and having had to retrace my steps quite often, I managed to complete all out-of-office tasks assigned to me.
At first I really didn’t grasp what Marko, Mr. Lehne’s PA, meant when he initially said that the Landtag was facing unfavorable political conditions. At the time, the elections that were held earlier that year had left none of the parties in Nordrhine-Westfalen with a clear majority, with the former opposition parties taking their time in forming a new government. During this time of extended negotiations, I began to understand what Marko had meant. Many a day I was taking my time reading newspaper articles or doing online “research”, literally waiting for the time to go home. The absolute highlight of my first few weeks, next to my city expeditions, was helping move Mr. Lehne’s office to a new office a few offices further down in the same passage.
The last week of my internship was probably the most interesting, as two of the five parties in the NRW Landtag had finally decided to form a coalition government, and the day to day life in parliament had more or less regained its normality. I had the opportunity to attend the first sitting of Parliament where the new Lantag president was elected, while on the following day, the new NRW prime minister was elected. During the following and also my last days at the Landtag, I attended a few sittings of Parliament during which various new bills and proposals were being presented and debated.
At the end of my internship, I had gained a very inclusive insight into the workings of not only the political system of Nordrhein-Westfalen, but also into the political system of Germany itself, as during my internship, Germany also had elected its new federal president. More importantly, I was presented the reality of how a political system functions during times which are not always favorable. In addition, I realized that the parliament itself is a very intricate system, having been exposed to the inner workings of a member of parliament’s office right through to having gained an insight into the responsibilities of the parliamentary assembly.
During my political Science studies, I was presented a picture of how political systems should and do to a certain extent work in theory, but through this internship, I have gained an invaluable insight into how a political structure works in practice. This internship has given me a new sense of curiosity in further exploring South Africa’s political system, as I never really had that much of an interest in understanding the smaller details of what politics is.
I want to take this opportunity again to thank Marko and Mr. Lehne for having given me this unique opportunity, and I want to reassure them, especially Marko, that although there were quite a few lazy days, I have nevertheless learnt a lot, specifically about the every-day administrative duties of a parliamentary office. I also want to take the opportunity to encourage those that are interested in conducting an internship in the NRW Landtag to take the opportunity to do so. Seeing and experiencing what politics is all about first hand, is quite different to reading about it in a newspaper or seeing it on television |
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