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GERMANY-POLITICS-FAR-RIGHT-AFD
Far-right upsets German vote for regional premier
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Feb 5, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The tiny central state of
Thuringia broke a German political taboo Wednesday when a candidate for the
regional premiership was unexpectedly heaved into office with help from the
far-right AfD party.
Thomas Kemmerich, a politician from the economically liberal Free
Democratic Party (FDP), scored 45 votes, leapfrogging incumbent Bodo Ramelow
of the Left party by one vote.
“This is the first time in the history of modern Germany that a state
premier has been elected with AfD votes,” political scientist Andre Brodocz
told broadcaster MDR.
The AfD’s own candidate received zero votes, indicating the party’s state
legislators aligned as a bloc behind Kemmerich.
While the vote was secret, the liberal candidate must also have enjoyed
support from lawmakers belonging to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative
CDU, as well as his FDP stablemates.
Media were quick to describe the event as a “political earthquake”, as
mainstream parties had so far refused to countenance working with anti-
immigration, anti-Islam and anti-EU AfD at any level.
The dam breaking in Thuringia is all the more surprising to observers as
the AfD’s leader there, Bjoern Hoecke, is one of the party’s most radical
figures, heading a loose movement within the party known as the “Wing”.
He has called for a “180 degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance
for the Holocaust and other crimes of the Nazis, which form a central pillar
of the country’s post-World War II political life.
But Thuringia also belongs to Germany’s former communist east, where
rejection of the far right has not taken such deep roots as in the west in
the decades since the country’s 1990 reunification.
As in other states, the autumn 2019 state election brought a surge for the
AfD.
But in light of the firewall towards the far right, incumbent state
premier Ramelow had been widely tipped to be reelected at the head of a
minority government.
BSS/AFP/ARS/2043 hrs