AfD successes in Magdeburg: CDU under pressure before election of Prime Minister

dpa | Confused, frustrated, disillusioned – after the first state parliament session, the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt is in a hangover mood. MPs report messages and emails that contain wild insults. Many politicians in Berlin are demanding clarification about how the election of AfD state parliament president Tobias Rausch and his deputy Hans-Thomas Tillschneider came about. And the question hanging over everything is: What do the events in Magdeburg mean for the election of Prime Minister that Ulrich Siegmund (AfD) is aiming for in December?

According to Rausch, things have been prepared for a long time. According to his own assessment, he also came into office with votes from the CDU. When asked by “Nius” whether he had also been elected by CDU MPs, Rausch said: “Yes.” According to the 35-year-old, he went to one or two people in advance, and CDU people also came to him.

When asked by the German Press Agency whether Siegmund could also expect four votes from the CDU parliamentary group in the election for Prime Minister, Rausch said that this had been agreed upon. “We’ll only be smarter when it happens.” We are also waiting for the CDU state party conference on December 5th. He didn't want to go into more detail.

With Rausch, the AfD has a state parliament president in Germany for the first time. He received 48 yes votes on Tuesday. 29 MPs voted against him. There were also 5 abstentions. Together, the AfD and BSW factions have 44 members. Rausch probably received 4 votes from other ranks in the secret vote.

The SPD, the Greens and the Left had announced that they would vote no. The CDU parliamentary group leadership recommended that its MPs abstain from the election. If everyone had followed this recommendation, there would have been 14 abstentions.

CDU parliamentary group leader and Prime Minister Sven Schulze did not want to comment on Rausch's statements. Before the election, however, several CDU MPs made it clear, according to dpa information, that they would vote no. The group says it was a strategic mistake on Schulze's part not to make this public in advance.

Schulze is also coming under increasing criticism in other ways. He secured the parliamentary group chairmanship in a close vote against the previous incumbent. Many see the fact that only a few MPs followed his recommendation to abstain as evidence that the CDU MPs are not following him unanimously. “He can’t get us together anymore,” say some members of the state parliamentary group. “The CDU is completely torn apart.” Some only see Schulze's resignation as a way out.

Is there a risk of a split? In any case, CDU state deputy Marco Tuller is considering leaving the CDU parliamentary group. "If these conflict situations do not improve, I would look at myself at the end of the year and think about how we can react to this. And all options are open," Tullner told MDR.

CDU general secretary Franziska Hoppermann describes the election of an AfD politician as state parliament president as a “severe blow” for the CDU. “It is a political and historical turning point for our country,” Hoppermann told the Funke media group. “How and whether the clarification of a secret election can be successful will have to be clarified in the state parliamentary groups.”

The CDU parliamentary group manager in the Bundestag, Catarina dos Santos-Wintz, also sees responsibility in Magdeburg. You have to ask the question: "How can you reconcile making such a decision with your conscience? I certainly couldn't do that."

The SPD in the federal government needs to talk to its coalition partner CDU. “It is a breach of taboo to elect right-wing extremists to such offices,” said SPD leader Lars Klingbeil. “Not only the BSW, but also the CDU must urgently explain how this could have happened.”

In the Saxony-Anhalt CDU there is less debate about Rausch's personality than about his deputy Tillschneider. The controversial AfD politician received 44 yes votes in the first round of voting and 38 MPs voted no. There were no abstentions. In the past, Tillschneider had repeatedly caused a stir in parliament with provocations. His proximity to Russia also attracted criticism on several occasions.

The vast majority of CDU MPs rule out the possibility that there were any votes from the Christian Democrats for Tillschneider. They point out that the AfD-BSW majority was achieved with the 44 votes. This is very noticeable, says a CDU man. The BSW wants to do damage to the CDU. The BSW, on the other hand, rejects such speculation - Tillschneider was not elected. It's a matter of statement against statement after the secret ballot.

Siegmund wants to be elected Prime Minister in December. This requires 42 votes in the first round of voting. He can't rely on the BSW here - the party has announced that it will abstain. This would mean that Siegmund would have to rely on three votes from other ranks.

The deputy leader of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Günter Krings (CDU), told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the number of votes in the vote for parliamentary president was “food for thought”. “We must now do everything we can to ensure that something like this does not happen again when a prime minister is elected.”