Tarek Al-Wazir
Deputy Minister-President of Hesse
Assumed office
18 January 2014
Minister-PresidentVolker Bouffier
Boris Rhein
Preceded byJörg-Uwe Hahn
Hessian Minister of Economics, Energy, Transport and Regional Development
Assumed office
18 January 2014
Minister-PresidentVolker Bouffier
Boris Rhein
Preceded byFlorian Rentsch
Personal details
Born (1971-01-03) 3 January 1971
Offenbach am Main, Hesse, West Germany
(now Germany)
Citizenship
  • Germany
  • Yemen
Political partyAlliance '90/The Greens

Tarek Mohammed Al-Wazir (Arabic: طارق محمد الوزير; born 3 January 1971) is a German politician. Al-Wazir is a member of Alliance '90/The Greens, and since January 2014, he has been deputy to the Hessian Minister-President, and Hessian Minister of Economics, Energy, Transport and Regional Development. He is a member of the Landtag of Hesse and was co-chair of the Hessian Green Party.

Early life and education

Al-Wazir was born in Offenbach am Main, Hesse, the son of an upper-class Yemeni father and a teacher.[1] He holds dual citizenship of Yemen and Germany. His parents divorced while he was a child, and he spent several years of his youth in the Yemeni capital (Sana'a) with his father, an experience he later described as very influential in his personal development.[2]

After his Abitur in 1991, he studied political science in Frankfurt, where he earned a degree.

Political career

Al-Wazir joined the German Green Party in 1989, and has been a member ever since. From 1992 to 1994 he was chair of the party's youth organisation (Green Youth) in Hesse. He has been a member of the Landtag since 1995 and is co-chair of the Hessian Green Party (with Kordula Schulz-Asche).

He was the leader of the Greens during the Hesse state election of 2008, and as such was the Green candidate for the position of Minister-President of Hesse. His party gained 7.5% of the votes. In the aftermath of the election, he pushed hard for a "red–green–red" coalition consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and Die Linke. This would have succeeded if not for an internal revolt by SPD members, forcing a new election in January 2009. In the 2009 elections, he again stood as the Green candidate for minister-president. Surveys showed Al-Wazir to be Hesse's most popular politician at the time of the vote.[3] This time his party, also benefitting from popular anger at the SPD, increased its share to 13.7% of the vote, but the Greens remained out of government.

On 18 January 2014, after the 2013 state elections, Al-Wazir became Deputy of the Hessian Minister-President Volker Bouffier and Hessian Minister of Economics, Energy, Transport and Regional Development in a Black-Green coalition. Thus they formed only the third CDU-Green government in Germany's 16 federal states and the first in a big and socially diverse region.[4] As one of Hesse's representatives at the Bundesrat, Al-Wazir is a member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and the Committee on Transport.

Al-Wazir was a Green Party delegate to the Federal Convention for electing the president of Germany in 2017.[5]

In the negotiations to form a so-called traffic light coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) following the 2021 German elections, Al-Wazir was part of his party's delegation in the working group on mobility, co-chaired by Anke Rehlinger, Anton Hofreiter and Oliver Luksic.[6]

Other activities (selection)

Regulatory agencies

Corporate boards

  • Helaba, alternate member of the supervisory board
  • HA Hessen Agentur GmbH, chair of the supervisory board
  • Messe Frankfurt, member of the supervisory board
  • Wirtschafts- und Infrastrukturbank Hessen (WIBank), chair of the advisory board

Non-profit organizations

Personal life

Al-Wazir is married to a Yemeni woman, with whom he has two sons. They also split time between Germany and Yemen.[9]

Al-Wazir's surname has been an aptronym since he assumed ministerial office in 2014, as الوزير "al-wazīr" is Arabic for "the government minister."[10]

References

  1. ↑ Alexander, Matthias (14 December 2013). "Schwarz-Grün in Hessen: Zwei Jungs aus dem Hüttendorf". FAZ.NET (in German). Retrieved 6 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Tarek, nicht Fritz, taz vom 27. Oktober 2008
  3. ↑ Dave Graham (4 February 2009), "Mac" brings Scottish flavor to German politics Reuters.
  4. ↑ Stefan Wagstyl (17 December 2013), Germany’s CDU and Greens strike coalition pact in Hesse region Financial Times.
  5. ↑ Ralf Euler (23 November 2016), 45 Hessen wählen mit Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
  6. ↑ Britt-Marie Lakämper (October 21, 2021), SPD, Grüne, FDP: Diese Politiker verhandeln die Ampel-Koalition Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.
  7. ↑ advisory board Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railway (BNetzA).
  8. ↑ Board of trustees Rheingau Musik Festival.
  9. ↑ "Grünen-Chef Tarek Al-Wazir gilt als scharfzüngiger Redner", 12 January 2008
  10. ↑ Wehr, Hans (1976). Cowan, J. Milton (ed.). Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, Third Edition. Spoken Language Services. p. 1064.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tarek Al-Wazir.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.