After the election of AfD politician Tobias Rausch as state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU cannot calm down. The question is whether some of their MPs voted for the AfD candidate. The head of the CDU workers' wing (CDA), Dennis Radtke, now called for consequences if that was the case.
“If it turns out that CDU MPs have elected the AfD candidate as state parliament president, I expect the party to initiate party expulsion proceedings against them,” Radtke told the Augsburger Allgemeine. “This must also apply to future votes: anyone who helps right-wing extremists gain political responsibility must expect consequences.”
Rausch was elected President of Parliament on Tuesday with 48 votes in the inaugural state parliament session in Magdeburg. The AfD and the BSW, which had previously announced its support for Rausch, together received 44 votes. Because the election was secret, it is unclear which four additional MPs voted for the AfD candidate.
“CDU members will have supported the decision”
CDU member of the Bundestag Serap Güler assumes that CDU members also voted for Rausch. If there were five abstentions out of the 14 CDU MPs who took part, "one or two CDU members will have supported this decision," said the State Minister in the Foreign Office in an interview with RTL/ntv. "I don't think we need to sugarcoat it now."
The CDU parliamentary group had recommended that its MPs abstain from the election. If everyone had followed this recommendation, there would have been 14 abstentions. But there were only five abstentions. For Güler, an active vote for an AfD prime minister is “not compatible with the understanding of Christian democratic values that I have.”
On Wednesday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned against “hasty conclusions” about votes from the CDU. Merz also spoke of the possibility of a “false flag operation” by parliamentarians from other factions in order to discredit CDU MPs.
Criticism of Prime Minister Schulze
CDU federal parliamentary group vice-president Sepp Müller meanwhile criticized Saxony-Anhalt's Prime Minister Sven Schulze. It was a mistake for the CDU parliamentary group leader in the state parliament to publicly recommend that his party colleagues abstain in the election of the state parliament president in advance, said Müller in an interview with mdr Aktuell. Schulze did this "even though colleagues in the state parliament had apparently already announced at the parliamentary group meeting that they would vote against it."
Müller went on the offensive after the election debacle and declared that he would run for the party's state chairmanship in Saxony-Anhalt in December. Schulze is currently still holding the position of state leader, but has announced his retirement.
Apparently also an issue in the coalition committee
The election of the AfD politician Rausch as state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt was apparently also an issue in the coalition committee made up of the Union and the SPD, which met until Wednesday evening. What exactly was discussed or decided was not made public.
However, in a text message to MPs, the parliamentary group leaders said: "We are aware that our democracy is currently facing a historic test." The Union and the SPD are “determined not to leave our country to the extremists.”
