The dispute within the AfD in Bremen escalated. Now the election management intervenes and speaks a word of power.Image: dpa / Philipp von Ditfurth
Deutschland
The state elections in Bremen are scheduled for mid-May. However, the intra-party feud of AfD for hustle and bustle. The deeply divided party is threatened with expulsion. Reason: There are two camps within the Bremen AfD and both have submitted a list.
According to the electoral law in Bremen, however, only one list per party is allowed. Both sides insisted that their list was correct. Now the election officials had to put their foot down and the verdict should not please the brawlers.
The city’s election management did not allow an AfD list at a meeting for the time being.
It is not up to the election committee to check which board is legitimate, says Carola Janssen, chairwoman of the Bremen electoral committee. This dispute must be resolved within the party. But both sides in Bremen now want to take legal action against the decision.
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Fragmented AfD Bremen wants to lodge a complaint
Both camps of the AfD Bremen want to lodge a complaint with the state election committee. This is to be discussed next Thursday (March 23).
The two camps have been arguing for months about who can represent the AfD in Bremen. One election proposal came from a so-called rump board around the state deputy Sergei Minich. The other suggestion came from a so-called emergency board led by parliamentarians Heinrich Löhmann and Frank Magnitz.
The election committee should not have accepted the inadmissible proposal from the Minich camp, says Löhmann: “The fault clearly lies with the election committee.” Janssen rejected this. Both lists came from AfD members on behalf of the party. “It remains the case: the AfD party has submitted two proposals.” And that’s not allowed under the electoral law.
And how does the governing body of the AfD in the federal government react to this quarrel with potentially serious consequences?
Fabian Jacobi (l.) and Sergej Minich (r.) at the special meeting of the electoral committee in Bremen.Image: dpa / Focke Strangmann
The national board belongs to Team Minich. For example, member of the Bundestag Fabian Jacobi put in a good word for the Minich camp. He believes that the emergency board’s list of candidates is not admissible due to a formal error in the invitation to the assembly. Then what remains is the proposal of the fuselage board; this must be checked “approval-friendly”. As a result, the electoral committee rejected both lists unanimously.
This means that the AfD cannot be selected in the Bremen city area. In the Bremen parliamentary elections in 2019, the AfD won five seats with 6.1 percent of the vote.
(With material from the dpa)
