AfD state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt: right-wing extremist march

Confident of victory, the flowers for Tobias Rausch are ready on the table of the AfD faction. Then the result: 48 members of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt voted for him. Enough for Rausch, as of this Tuesday he will be the AfD's first state parliament president nationwide. The 48 votes are more than previously expected. Rausch receives a standing ovation from his group. The BSW also claps. Otherwise there is peace.

A little later, in the front row of the CDU faction, Sven Schulze reaches next to him, picks up a bouquet of flowers and stands up. The acting Prime Minister is in the plenary hall on this day as the leader of the CDU parliamentary group. As such, he walks up to Rausch, hands him the bouquet and quickly pushes past the photographer. The SPD, on the other hand, presented Rausch with a basic law and a white rose for the election.

Before the secret election, only the BSW had announced that it would vote for the AfD candidate. Together the two parties have 44 votes. After four other MPs voted for the AfD, Schulze's CDU faction is now in focus. She had announced in advance that she would abstain from the election. According to information from the taz, two members of the parliamentary group stated that they would vote against Rausch. Accordingly, there should have been 12 abstentions. In the end there were only five.

Other factions say that the CDU is obviously torn apart. As chairman, Schulze has no control. This is also relevant because the AfD has been claiming since the state elections that it has been talking to individual CDU MPs in order to persuade them to defect.

In the AfD, people rubbed their hands at the votes. The vote is seen internally as a stress test for the prime ministerial election, which the designated AfD head of government Ulrich Siegmund had announced for December. He only wants to go into a first round of voting with a “significant majority”. As well as things went for the right-wing extremists today, they hope, together with the stirrup-holding BSW, to be able to terminate the State Broadcasting Treaty by Christmas.

As President of the State Parliament, Rausch now holds a key position for the AfD's seizure of power. He formally occupies the highest office in the country. This means that he controls the state parliament administration, can conduct personnel policy as he sees fit, travel abroad, enforces house rules and is responsible for smooth government control processes. And his central role in the AfD nepotism scandal does not necessarily give rise to optimism that he is serious about democratic control. A state parliament president is a crucial lever if you want to undermine democracy.

Before the meeting, around 300 people protested on Cathedral Square in front of the state parliament with a large red banner that read: “No cooperation with the extreme right.” They were reading out the articles of the Basic Law banning parties when suddenly right-wing extremism marketer Ulrich Siegmund, grinning as always, and other AfD MPs appeared at the police barrier before the protest, accompanied by right-wing extremist streamers, and were met with whistles and boos. The media crowd around Siegmund finally becomes completely bizarre when the Center for Political Beauty protest bus starts its “shitty AfD chant”.

Eva von Angern opened the first state parliament session punctually at 11 a.m. She has been a member of the state parliament since 2002 and has the longest experience. In Saxony-Anhalt, this makes her senior president. In her opening speech, she emphasized the low proportion of women in the state parliament of 22 percent and recalled the “Antifa clause” in the constitution. According to this, all state violence must be directed against the resurgence of National Socialism.

After her speech, von Angern moved on to the agenda. The most important point for the day was the election of the President of the State Parliament. In the afternoon, the state parliament voted on Tobias Rausch's representatives. The hardliner Hans-Thomas Tillschneider ran for the AfD. The CDU proposed Carsten Borchert, the SPD proposed the previous Science Minister Armin Willingmann. At the time of going to press, the elections had not yet ended.

As soon as Tobias Rausch was chosen, the leader of the Green Party, Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz, went to the podium. Party leaders are always allowed to speak in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt. In a short speech, Sziborra-Seidlitz reminds us that the President of the State Parliament must protect the dignity and rights of all representatives. She has doubts about whether Rausch can do justice to this.

The AfD has placed itself in the middle, but that doesn't mean it is in the "center of society," she said. The Greens had received a voter mandate and they wanted to fulfill it. “Democratic institutions do not protect themselves,” said the Green Party. If the President of the State Parliament does not respect the rights in Parliament, her group will draw legal consequences.

Finally, she looks again into the five rows of the AfD faction directly in front of her: “With regard to the seating arrangement, let’s put this faction under democratic pressure.” Laughter from the AfD. Ulrich Siegmund slouches in his seat. There is applause from the Greens.

At the end, Rausch's speech, emphatically diplomatic, poorly read, repeated several times. As if an AI had been asked to write a speech for a state parliament president. Rausch says: “The days of political firewalls should be a thing of the past.” In the end, no one clapped except the AfD and BSW.

When Tobias Rausch continues the meeting after the lunch break, he initially seems slightly overwhelmed and a little unconfident and continues to read from the paper. The problem: He can't read aloud very well. Accordingly, he presents the election process for the state parliament vice-presidents in a bumpy manner.

The AfD's first suggestion: Putin fan and ethnic ideologist Hans-Thomas Tillschneider. The BSW had announced that it would not vote for Tillschneider. But he is actually elected in a secret ballot with 44 votes. Afterwards there is applause from the BSW, but only from Michael Reim. BSW parliamentary group leader Thomas Schulze presents Tillschneider with a bouquet of flowers and shakes his hand for a long time. Some CDU MPs seem downright dismayed, as do the Greens and the Left. The SPD asks for a 15-minute break. While the AfD MPs congratulate Tillschneider one after the other, a bouquet of flowers remains on his table.