Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt: Siegmund expects unknowns

The talks are apparently going well for the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt. On Tuesday afternoon, AfD top candidate Ulrich Siegmund announced in the state parliament in Magdeburg that he wanted to stand for election as Prime Minister in mid-December. His party is three votes short of the necessary majority. So far, the AfD has only been officially negotiating with the BSW. This in turn vehemently emphasizes that it will not vote for Siegmund. He is now convinced that he will get the necessary votes in the first round of voting.

In the state elections on September 6th, the AfD received 43.8 percent. This means that she has 39 of the 83 members in the new state parliament. The national authoritarian party had said in recent weeks that it wanted to persuade CDU MPs to defect to the AfD. She hasn't had any success with it so far. The AfD left it open on Tuesday where the missing votes for Siegmund's election would come from.

A few hours earlier there had been a conversation about a “cross-party prime minister” at the SPD party headquarters, also in Magdeburg. The SPD had invited people to talk about a stable government without AfD participation. Representatives of the Left, the Greens and the BSW came; the CDU had already canceled last week.

The conversation was about different perspectives, SPD state chairman Andreas Schmidt reported to the press afterwards. A follow-up date is in prospect - at least if the BSW does not join forces with the AfD. That's not such a small limitation.

The BSW has announced that it will elect AfD MP Tobias Rausch as President of the State Parliament at the inaugural session of the State Parliament next week. This is “parliamentary practice”. Eva von Angern, parliamentary group leader of the Left, announced: If the BSW implements joint projects with the AfD, the Left will no longer work with it.

The Left, the Greens and the SPD reiterated on Tuesday that the aim of the joint talks was to prevent an AfD prime minister. Von Angern said that a cross-party prime minister was not the best solution. “But I also see the emergency situation we find ourselves in here in Saxony-Anhalt.”

Together with the BSW, the three parties have 29 of 83 seats in the state parliament – ​​far from a majority. However, the plan stipulates that a cross-party Prime Minister would also receive votes from other factions. The BSW insists that the AfD must also be taken into account because almost 44 percent of voters voted for them. The Left, SPD and Greens only have the CDU in mind.

But last week the CDU declared that it would not take part in talks about a government. After the election, the state executive committee decided to go into opposition. She only received 17.2 percent of the vote, around 20 percentage points less than in the previous election. The regional association says that in order to recover, you have to reorganize yourself. Continuing to govern as in the past 24 years is therefore out of the question.

It remains to be seen whether there is a cross-party candidacy that could attract the Christian Democrats' approval. No name had yet been mentioned in the discussions, explained von Angern. It was about the qualities that such a person had to have. Von Angern himself said to the group: “That’s probably the jack of all trades.”

Despite the obvious differences, there should be a follow-up meeting after the constituent meeting. The SPD is sticking to this even after Siegmund's announcement, the party told the taz.