“Now the ball is in Siegmund’s court” – the CDU will “of course” come back for the third round, said Schulze

The CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt wants to be in the plenary hall in the third round of the prime ministerial election. Should there be a third round of voting in which the simple majority counts, “then of course we would also be in the plenum,” said Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister and CDU parliamentary group leader Sven Schulze in the ZDF “Morgenmagazin”.

Schulze left it open how the CDU would then vote: “How we then behave also depends on what the situation is – is there one candidate, are there several candidates?”

However, the Prime Minister emphasized again: “We will not vote for an AfD Prime Minister.” The CDU parliamentary group decided on Tuesday to leave the plenary hall in the first and second rounds of the prime ministerial election in December. The AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund wants to stand for election. “The fact is: the ball is now in Siegmund’s court,” Schulze continued.

Siegmund has announced that he will only run in the first round of voting, said Schulze. “That's why the first thing was to create clarity for the first and second round of voting from our point of view internally,” the parliamentary group leader explained the CDU decision.

14 CDU MPs agreed to this, one abstained. The entire parliamentary group perceived the decision not to appear in the first round of voting as “a path that can be implemented,” said Schulze. He added: “Except for one person who wants to take another legal look at what that means for him.”

For Schulze, the decision shows a restored unity. “We managed to mend rifts that actually existed in the parliamentary group,” he emphasized.

The AfD is currently in talks with the BSW and, according to its own statements, also seeking support from individual members of other parliamentary groups in order to achieve the necessary majority for Siegmund's election. No party wants to form a coalition with the AfD. If Siegmund is elected Prime Minister, it would be the first time that the AfD has governed a German state.

Last week, Tobias Rausch, an AfD politician, was elected as the new state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt. He received four more votes in a secret ballot than the AfD and the BSW, which openly supports the AfD, have combined. It is possible that further votes came from the CDU - because the SPD, the Greens and the Left had announced that they would vote no.