After the election in Saxony-Anhalt: Greens in Saxony-Anhalt: Let us not be intimidated

After the election of AfD politician Tobias Rausch as President of the State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, Green Party leader Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz announced that she would resolutely defend freedom and human dignity in the state following a possible AfD takeover of government. «We will object when people are belittled because of their origins, their beliefs or their way of life. We will intervene if the rights of minorities and the opposition are to be curtailed, if Saxony-Anhalt is to become their prey," she said during the first session of the new state parliament in the direction of the AfD.

The party was by far the strongest force in the election a month ago and is aiming for government. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies it as a right-wing extremist in the country.

Sziborra-Seidlitz said her party would defend the independence of science, culture and the media. “Where that doesn’t happen, we will exhaust the parliamentary and legal options,” she said.

With the election of a member of a firmly right-wing extremist and anti-constitutional party as President of the state parliament, a “boundary” had been crossed, she said. “We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated and we will not get used to it if the rights here or those of the people in the country are to be curtailed.”

Exclusion should not become a figurehead

Sziborra-Seidlitz said that the AfD had seated itself in the middle of the plenary hall with a different seating arrangement. Places in parliament can be moved, but political positions do not change as a result. “The democratic middle that arises through attitude and action, through respect for the equal dignity of every single person.” Saxony-Anhalt cannot afford “for exclusion to become the figurehead, the political figurehead of this parliament and our country.”

The state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt elected the 35-year-old Rausch to the highest office in the state in the first ballot. In the vote in Magdeburg he received 48 yes votes. 29 MPs voted against him. There were also 5 abstentions.

The President of the State Parliament is, according to protocol, the highest-ranking politician in the country. He chairs the state parliament sessions and represents the parliament externally.