AfD speaker vote: Merz threatens Saxony-Anhalt CDU lawmakers with expulsion
Speaking to the Young Union, Merz warned party members who may have secretly voted for the AfD’s Rausch: anyone who elects such people to state office has no place in the CDU.
Symbolic image · Photo: FalkoMD / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Chancellor and CDU leader Friedrich Merz threatened expulsion from the party over events in Saxony-Anhalt at the Young Union’s Deutschlandtag convention in Bonn. The background is suspicion that CDU lawmakers in Magdeburg may have voted in a secret ballot for AfD politician Tobias Rausch as speaker of the state parliament. “Anyone in our ranks who thinks such people should be elected to state office has no” place in the CDU of Germany, Merz said, according to ZDF.
On Oct. 6, Rausch became the first AfD politician in the history of the Federal Republic to be elected head of a state parliament. He received 48 of 82 valid votes, while the AfD and the BSW together hold only 44 seats. The CDU parliamentary group had announced it would abstain. Because the vote was secret, it has not been established who cast the additional votes. The election of a state premier is planned for December; AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund claims to have already secured a majority.
In the same speech, Merz also sharply distanced himself from the Left Party and warned the SPD and the Greens against an alliance with it in Berlin. “Anyone who wants to strengthen the political center must not hold talks with left-wing radicals,” he said, according to dpa. “We stand up against anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist,” Merz said. Referring to falling poll numbers, he said: “Germany needs us in the future too, but we have to make the case for it anew.”