Tarek Al-Wazir

Tarek Mohammed Al-Wazir (Arabic: طارق محمد الوزير‎; born 3 January 1971) is a politician in the German Green Party. Since January 2014 he has been deputy to the Hessian prime minister Volker Bouffier, 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.

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

Early life and education

Al-Wazir was born in Offenbach am Main, Hesse, the son of an upper-class Yemeni father and a sudeten German mother. 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.[1]

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 the far-left Die Linke party. 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]

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.[7]

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."[8]

References
  1. Tarek, nicht Fritz, taz vom 27. Oktober 2008
  2. Dave Graham (4 February 2009), "Mac" brings Scottish flavor to German politics Reuters.
  3. Stefan Wagstyl (17 December 2013), Germany’s CDU and Greens strike coalition pact in Hesse region Financial Times.
  4. Ralf Euler (23 November 2016), 45 Hessen wählen mit Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
  5. advisory board Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railway (BNetzA).
  6. Board of trustees Rheingau Musik Festival.
  7. "Grünen-Chef Tarek Al-Wazir gilt als scharfzüngiger Redner", 12 January 2008
  8. Wehr, Hans (1976). Cowan, J. Milton (ed.). Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, Third Edition. Spoken Language Services. p. 1064.
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