The regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony have confirmed what all the polls had predicted: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won its first regional elections since its founding in 2013. This is the first victory for a far-right party in a regional election since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, built on the ruins of a country destroyed by a world war caused by Nazism.
The AfD’s victory in Thuringia is unchallengeable. AfD got close to 33% of the vote, almost ten points more than the conservative CDU with around 24%. In Saxony, the CDU’s victory is bittersweet for the Christian Democrats: it got just under 32% of the vote, one point more than the far right.
Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz has described the election result as “bitter” and “worrying” and called on parties to create a cordon sanitaire around the “right-wing extremists” of the AfD in order to keep the far right out of government. “Our country cannot and must not get used to this. AfD is harming Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining the reputation of our country,” the chancellor said in a statement to Reuters.
The institutions of post-war Germany were created with the intention of constantly reminding us of the horrors generated by fascism and of delegitimising new attempts to create a successful political project that would try to re-establish an ethnic nationalism. The election results this Sunday in these two eastern German states confirm that Germany has failed in this attempt. AfD is the most successful far-right political project in the history of the Federal Republic. Its success in Thuringia marks a before and after in German history, and will hardly be without political consequences at the federal level.
In both states, which are located in what was once the territory of the former German Democratic Republic, the AfD is officially considered by the Office for the Defence of the Constitution – the country’s internal intelligence – to be a “far-right” party. The ideology and biographies of its leaders in Saxony and Thuringia leave little room for doubt. Björn Höcke is the leader of the most radical wing of the AfD, which openly defends ethnic nationalist, historical and Holocaust revisionist positions that border on neo-Nazism. Before the party was founded, he participated in marches of the neo-Nazi party NPD, as shown by the newspaper archives.
The ‘Wagon servant’ factor
The second winner of the election night is the young Sahra Wagenknecht Coalition (BSW), founded in January and represented in both state parliaments thanks to double-digit results. The BSW is the third largest party in Thuringia and Saxony, with more than 15% in the former state and around 12% in the latter. Wagenknecht’s party has a meteoric electoral trajectory and will be key to forming a government in both states.
The evolution of BSW is unknown. At the moment, it can be defined as a left-wing party in economic terms and conservative in migration policy and other non-material issues. In addition, the party named after the former deputy of the post-communist Left Party flatly rejects continued military support for Ukraine and is committed to a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine. In fact, one of its main electoral banners in these elections, despite being regional, has been the Ukrainian question and the relationship with Russia, which includes the recovery of Russian gas and oil.
Wagenknecht, who was the leader of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Platform within the Left, has perfectly understood the political moment in Germany. He offers a speech that resonates especially in eastern Germany, where the protest vote is historically higher than in the western part of the country and which had been a traditional bastion of the post-communists. The Left ends a night to forget: it is excluded from the Saxon parliament and loses almost 20 points in Thuringia, where it had its only regional prime minister, Bodo Ramelow, who will no longer be prime minister.
Since all parties represented in parliament are ruling out forming a government with the far right, the formation of coalitions will be difficult. In Saxony, the CDU could try to revive the current “Kenya Coalition” (conservatives, social democrats and greens) or even form a pact with Wagenknecht’s party, an unnatural but necessary coalition if the AfD is to be prevented from entering government.
In Thuringia, the situation is even more complicated: after the AfD’s victory, the CDU will have to negotiate with the BSW and the Left in order to achieve a parliamentary majority. The far right also has a third of all seats, so its votes will be needed to dissolve parliament and call new elections, to introduce changes to the regional constitution or to appoint judges to the Thuringian Constitutional Court. Cooperation with the AfD will be necessary to avoid institutional deadlock. The normalisation of their positions is therefore pre-planned.
Debacle of the ‘Traffic Light Coalition’
The three parties that make up the current government coalition led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz deserve special mention. The electoral corrective to the Social Democrats of the SPD, the Greens and the Liberals of the FDP is incontestable. The latter are excluded from the two regional parliaments. The eco-liberals only manage to obtain representation in Saxony. The SPD will be present in both parliaments, but with its worst results in history: just over 7% in Saxony and 6% in Thuringia.
The Traffic Light Coalition will have to take some action if it is to have any chance in the regional elections in the eastern state of Brandenburg on 22 September. Scholz is likely to propose changes to his economic, foreign and migration policies. A break-up of the coalition and early federal elections are not out of the question. The next one is scheduled for September next year, too long for a divided and weak government, which Sunday’s regional elections put on the ropes.
Source: www.eldiario.es
