Something very important happened in Sachsen-Anhalt yesterday.
You’ll remember that last month, Sachsen-Anhalt elected a new Landtag, and Alternative für Deutschland received 43.8% of the vote – enough for 39 of 83 parliamentary seats. That is not quite a majority, but it is close enough to make the firewall against the AfD unworkable. Afterwards the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which has five seats, entered talks with the AfD. Thirty-nine plus five is 44, which you will note is a majority of 83. Lead AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund has announced that he plans to be elected Minister President, or premier, of Sachsen-Anhalt in September, at which point he will form the first-ever AfD state government.
Yesterday the new Landtag held their inaugural meeting, the primary order of business being to elect a Landtag President. Landtag Presidents run parliamentary meetings, administer parliamentary business and act as the body’s official representative. They have little explicit power but great symbolic significance, which would be why all the high-minded defenders of the firewall against the AfD have worked very hard to keep Landtag presidencies out of AfD hands. Of course, the cartel parties no longer have the votes to do much of anything in Sachsen-Anhalt, and it was a foregone conclusion that the AfD would succeed in placing their first Landtag president ever – in the guise of an auto mechanic and real estate agent named Tobias Rausch. The BSW had pledged to support Rausch’s candidacy, and as I said above 39 AfD votes plus 5 BSW votes is 44 votes, which is enough.
Yesterday, however, Rausch did not just get 44 votes. Instead he got 48 votes, which means that four CDU members broke ranks and pissed on the sacred firewall to help the AfD into their first Landtag presidency.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member