A far right On Sunday, the party won a state election within the east of the country for the primary time in post-war Germany and appeared set to complete just second behind the mainstream conservatives in a second election.
A recent party founded by a outstanding leftist The parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government even have a robust influence unpopular national government has achieved extremely weak results.
The extreme right Alternative for GermanyThe AfD received 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia – well ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, the biggest opposition party on the national level, with 23.6%.
In neighboring Saxony, based on forecasts by the general public television stations ARD and ZDF, the CDU, which has been within the lead on this federal state since German reunification in 1990, would receive 31.9 percent and the AfD 30.6 to 30.7 percent. Compared to the last state election in 2019, the AfD was in a position to record significant gains in Thuringia, but smaller ones in Saxony.
“For the first time since 1949, an openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament and this is causing great concern and fear among many people,” said Omid Nouripour, parliamentary group leader of the Greens, one among the nationwide governing parties.
Other parties say they may not bring the AfD to power by joining forces with it in a coalition. Nevertheless, its strength will make it extremely difficult for it to form recent state governments, forcing other parties to form exotic recent coalitions. The recent Sahra Wagenknecht AllianceThe SPD, the SPD Party for Business and Labor (BSW), received 15.8 percent of the vote in Thuringia and almost 12 percent in Saxony, which made the situation much more complicated.
“This is a historic success for us,” said Alice Weidel, federal chairwoman of the AfD, to ARD. She described the result as a “requiem” for Scholz's coalition.
CDU Federal Secretary General Carsten Linnemann said: “The voters in both countries knew: We will not form a coalition with the AfD, and that will remain the case – we are saying that very, very clearly.”
Weidel denounced this as “pure ignorance” and said: “The voters want the AfD to participate in the government.”
Deep dissatisfaction with a national government notorious for its power struggles, Mood against immigration and skepticism about German military aid to Ukraine are among the many aspects which have contributed to the support of populist parties within the region, which is less prosperous than West Germany.
The AfD is strongest in the previous communist East, and the domestic intelligence The party has officially placed its branches in Saxony and Thuringia under surveillance as “proven right-wing extremist” groups. Its chairman in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, was convicted the deliberate use of a Nazi slogan at political events, but is appealing.
When an ARD interviewer commented on the assessment of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Höcke reacted angrily: “Please stop stigmatizing me. We are the number 1 party in Thuringia. You don't want a third of the voters in Thuringia to be classified as right-wing extremists.”
He said he was “very, very proud” of Sunday's result for his 11-year-old party and that “the old parties should show humility.”
Scholz's center-left Social Democrats remained in each state parliaments with single-digit numbers of votes, however the environmental Greens lost their seats in Thuringia. The two parties were the junior partners of the coalition within the two outgoing state governments. The third party within the federal government, the business-friendly Free Democrats, also lost its seats in Thuringia. It was now not represented in Saxony.
A 3rd state election will follow on September 22 in one other eastern state, Brandenburg, which is currently led by Scholz's party. next national election is due in only over a yr.
Thuringia’s politics are particularly complicated since the The Left The party of outgoing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow has slipped into irrelevance on the national level. Compared to 5 years ago, it has lost greater than half of its support and fallen to 13.1 percent.
Sahra Wagenknecht, long one among its best-known figures, left the party last yr to form her own party, which has now outstripped the Left Party. Wagenknecht celebrated her party's success, stressed her refusal to work with AfD leader Höcke and expressed hope that she could form “a good government” with the CDU.
The CDU has long rejected cooperation with the Left Party, which emerged from the communist East German parties. It has not ruled out cooperation with Wagenknecht's BSW, which can also be strongest within the East. However, the result implies that the CDU cannot form a coalition without the Left Party that has a majority within the Thuringian state parliament.
AfD has high Mood against immigration within the region. August 23 Knife attack within the western city of Solingen, where a suspected extremist from Syria, accused of killing three people, helped put the difficulty back at the highest of Germany's political agenda and prompted Scholz's government to announce recent restrictions on knives and recent measures to facilitate deportations.
Wagenknecht's BSW combines left-wing economic policy with an immigration-sceptical agenda. The CDU has also increased the pressure on the federal government, a tougher stance on immigration.
Germany’s attitude towards Russia's war in Ukraine can also be a sensitive issue within the East. Berlin is the second largest Weapons supplier to the USA; these arms deliveries are something that each AfD and BSW reject. Wagenknecht also attacked a recent decision by the German government and the USA to station Long-range missiles to Germany in 2026.
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