Saxony-Anhalt: 'The CDU must decide now' – SPD leader warns over AfD
Saxony-Anhalt SPD leader Andreas Schmidt says CDU votes helped an AfD politician become Landtag president. The premiership could be settled by Weidel and Wagenknecht, he suggests.
Symbolic image · Photo: Torsten Maue / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Pressure is mounting on the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of the vote for state premier. "Here the CDU must now decide," Saxony-Anhalt SPD leader Andreas Schmidt said in an interview with the SPD party newspaper vorwärts published on Monday. According to Schmidt, the four votes beyond those of the AfD and the BSW that AfD politician Tobias Rausch received when he was elected president of the state parliament on 6 October came from the CDU group. The CDU group has announced it will leave the chamber during the vote for premier; Schmidt said: "This shows that the leadership of the CDU group has no trust in its own people."
According to Schmidt, AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund wants to stand for election in December, but only for a first round. "The question will be what happens if there is a second or even a third round," Schmidt said. He declined to predict whether the BSW will abstain as announced, but said he could imagine the question being decided not in Magdeburg but in negotiations between Alice Weidel and Sahra Wagenknecht. According to vorwärts, the BSW helped an AfD motion to end support for Ukraine win a majority; Schmidt speaks of a "very far-reaching cooperation" between the two parties.
According to dpa, the AfD holds 39 seats in the state parliament, the CDU, Left, Greens and SPD together also 39, and the BSW 5; a majority requires 42 votes. According to dpa, the CDU has said it will not vote for Siegmund. The SPD called off a planned round of talks among the democratic parties. "We remain ready to do everything to prevent the AfD from taking over or joining the government," Schmidt said – but that requires the CDU and BSW to take a clear position.