In his election, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider received five more votes than his party had. The other factions – including BSW – had previously declared that they would not support the AfD man.
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Hans-Thomas Tillschneider was elected first vice-president of the state parliament. The controversial AfD politician received 44 of 82 votes, 38 MPs voted against him. There were no abstentions. Tillschneider received five votes from other parties. The BSW had previously announced that it would not support the AfD candidate.
After the election of Tobias Rausch as the AfD's first state parliament president in Germany, CDU parliamentary group leader Sven Schulze cannot explain where the additional votes for the AfD politician could come from. It was a secret election and therefore incomprehensible, Schulze told the German Press Agency. The leadership of the CDU parliamentary group had recommended that a total of 15 members of parliament abstain from the election of the state parliament president.
In the morning it was clear that not everyone wanted to follow the recommendation. Some had indicated that they wanted to vote “no,” said Schulze. “But none of us said that we would vote 'yes',” emphasized the Prime Minister. “Nobody.”
It just continued - now the meeting is interrupted again. The request for this was made by the SPD parliamentary group after Tillschneider was elected Vice President of the State Parliament. The break is scheduled for 15 minutes.
It starts with the first round of voting. Three vice-presidents will be elected; Parliament voted on this immediately after the session restarted. Only Hans-Thomas Tillschneider (AfD) is available for election in the first round. The CDU and SPD have withdrawn their candidates - Carsten Borchert for the CDU, Armin Willingmann for the SPD - for the first round of voting.
For the first time, an AfD politician holds the highest office in a federal state - the AfD is celebrating and sees itself as having arrived at the political center. “The so-called firewall has finally fallen today in the Magdeburg state parliament,” said AfD parliamentary group leader Ulrich Siegmund in an AfD press release. Siegmund announced that he wanted to take the next steps in the state parliament with “exactly this tailwind”. In December he wants to be elected as the first AfD Prime Minister in Germany.
After a two and a half hour break, the session in the parliament in Saxony-Anhalt continues. A total of three vice positions are available. The AfD proposes its controversial MP Hans-Thomas Tillschneider as a candidate for the office. This is possible because the AfD and BSW changed the state parliament's rules of procedure immediately after the break. This means that the AfD can now nominate a vice president, even though it already has the state parliament president, Tobias Rausch.
The Left in the Bundestag sharply criticized the election of the AfD's first state parliament president in parliament in Magdeburg and held the CDU partly responsible. “This is the next big step towards the seizure of power by a party that is the spiritual heir to those who led this country into its darkest time,” parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek told reporters in Berlin.
Tobias Rausch's announcement that he would see his office as President of the State Parliament as a non-partisan role was met with skepticism by representatives of other factions. In the past few weeks, she has seen that the AfD politician has insisted on the new majority, says SPD parliamentary group leader Katja Pähle to MDR.
In his first speech as the newly elected President of the State Parliament, Tobias Rausch made it clear how he understands his role. “I will not hold this office as president of a parliamentary group, but as president of the entire state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt,” he told MPs. Rausch has been a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt since 2016.
Where do the four additional votes come from? The AfD and BSW together would have had 44 votes, but a total of 48 MPs elected Tobias Rausch as the new President of the State Parliament. Assuming that the AfD and BSW voted together for the AfD general secretary, four more votes must come from one of the parties that had previously ruled out Rausch being elected: the CDU, SPD, Greens or Left.
The Green parliamentary group leader Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz made this statement immediately after the announcement of the election of Tobias Rausch as President of the State Parliament. "Today, however, this is more than a normal parliamentary constitution. Today it can be seen that a limit has been crossed with the election of a member of a clearly right-wing extremist and anti-constitutional party as President of this house," she said.
When the result of the election for state parliament president was announced, there was a broad grin on the face of the AfD's co-parliamentary group leader, Ulrich Siegmund. The newly elected Tobias Rausch, on the other hand, seems surprisingly serious. After the announcement by senior president Eva von Angern, Siegmund is the first to stand up. His group gives Rausch a standing ovation. There is no applause from the other groups - only silence and disgruntled faces.
