Magdeburg. The Saxony-Anhalt AfD is clearly ahead of the CDU in the election polls - and has now received support from an unexpected direction. A CDU local politician donated a total of 10,000 euros to the AfD and at the same time made a recommendation for the party. This is a very important sign, said AfD top candidate Ulrich Siegmund. This sends a clear message to vote for the AfD and that the CDU must end its “left-wing course”.
The AfD has confirmed receipt of the donation in two tranches of 5,000 euros each. It comes from the haulage contractor Bernd Prange, who sits on the Stendal district council for the CDU and is the local mayor of the municipality “Altmärkische Höhe” in the Seehausen municipality. In a letter to the state CDU, from which the “Magdeburger Volksstimme” quotes, Prange justifies his donation with “deep concern for our country”.
When asked by the German Press Agency, Prange confirmed the two donation payments, but did not want to comment in more detail. He didn't want to justify himself, said Prange. He only wanted to comment on it again after the state elections on September 6th.
According to media reports, Prange writes in the letter that he finds his conservative values such as performance, order, security, national sovereignty, economic reason and the protection of cultural identity less and less represented in the CDU. “Instead, I see a party that is moving step by step to the left, raising its firewall against the AfD ever higher and at the same time accepting or even pushing for cooperation with left-wing and left-wing radical forces.”
He was worried “that parts of the CDU would betray and sell this country and their own party to the left,” it continued. Prange announced that he would vote for the AfD in the state elections on September 6th and hopes that conservatives will follow suit, “so that the AfD wins an absolute majority in Saxony-Anhalt and the CDU realizes that it has to change its course.”
Prime Minister and CDU top candidate Sven Schulze did not want to comment. The Saxony-Anhalt CDU General Secretary Mario Karschunke sharply criticized Prange's behavior and threatened expulsion from the party. “We take the reporting about a possible donation from a CDU member from the CDU district association Stendal very seriously,” he told the news magazine “Focus”.
If the incident turns out to be true, it would represent a very serious matter under party law, explained Karschunke. The donation will be discussed in the district executive committee, the committee responsible for possible party exclusion proceedings.
According to the news magazine “Focus”, the CDU politician wants to provoke this step. “I want them to kick me out,” Prange is quoted as saying. “The CDU is no longer my home and future.”
SPD parliamentary secretary Dirk Wiese called for consequences. “If a CDU official donates 10,000 euros to the AfD and calls for the firewall to be abandoned, then that is not an insignificant local incident,” Wiese told the “Rheinische Post”.
He expects a quick and clear reaction from the Christian Democrats. "It now needs clarity that there is no room in the CDU for any support for the AfD. The SPD has always been and is unequivocal here," said the Parliamentary Managing Director of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Anyone like Prange who supports the AfD so massively financially and wants it to win an absolute majority in the state elections is “leaving the democratic center and continuing to work on the normalization of an anti-constitutional party.”
The AfD is classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement in Saxony-Anhalt. In state election surveys, it currently has more than 40 percent of the second votes, putting it well ahead of the CDU. The Christian Democrats have around 24 percent.
