Forty-eight votes out of 82 cast on Tuesday made Tobias Rausch speaker of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament, putting the Alternative for Germany in charge of a regional legislature for the first time since the Second World War while the party struggles to form a government.
The inaugural sitting of the 83-seat legislature in Magdeburg brought the Alternative for Germany, commonly known as the AfD, its first major institutional post in the eastern state following its landmark election win last month. Tobias Rausch, a 35-year-old former estate agent who serves as the party’s election manager, secured the presidency of the regional parliament in a secret ballot on Tuesday with 48 votes out of 82 cast. Forty-two votes were required for an absolute majority.
Twenty-nine lawmakers voted against Rausch and five abstained while about 400 to 500 protesters gathered outside. Demonstrators read aloud Germany’s constitution and held up a long red banner reading No cooperation with the extreme right
ahead of the session. The Saxony-Anhalt branch of the party has been classified as rightwing extremist by the state intelligence service.
Tobias Rausch Secures Parliamentary Leadership with Far-Left Backing
Because the AfD holds 39 seats in the state parliament and the populist Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, known as the BSW, holds five, Rausch’s tally of 48 votes indicated that he drew support from at least four lawmakers outside those two groups in the secret ballot. The BSW had previously promised to support Rausch, citing parliamentary convention that the largest faction takes the presidency while other mainstream parties maintained their firewall against cooperating with the far-right.
Outgoing state Premier Sven Schulze of the Christian Democratic Union said his party’s leadership had recommended that its 15 lawmakers abstain, and none of us said we would vote ‘yes,’
according to Schulze’s comments to the German press agency DPA. That left the origin of the extra four votes unexplained. Tim Klüssendorf, general secretary of the center-left Social Democrats, demanded that the CDU immediately clarify who from within its ranks may have considered this disastrous decision to be right
and criticized the BSW for assisting the far-right milestone.
The BSW has made a conscious decision to elect, for the first time since 1945, a politician from a far-right party to the leadership of a German parliament.
Tim Klüssendorf, Social Democrats general secretary
Later in the sitting, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a representative of the AfD’s more extreme wing who is being lined up to serve as the state’s culture and science minister, was elected as Rausch’s deputy. In his acceptance speech, Rausch pledged to serve the entire state parliament impartially, stating that he would not settle any scores from the past
and would protect minority rights.
Stalemate Over Government Formation and the State Firewall
Top candidate Ulrich Siegmund fell three seats short of an absolute majority in the September 6 election and has failed to secure enough support from potential partners or publicly win over defectors from rival parties during weeks of lobbying.
Siegmund announced before Tuesday’s session that he aims to win parliamentary backing to become state premier in a first round of voting scheduled for December to give his team more time to build a coalition. If those efforts fail, Siegmund has floated the possibility of holding new elections.
Migrants and Civil Society Confront an Uncertain Future in Magdeburg
Ola Akhras and her husband, who fled Homs, Syria, for Germany in 2018 and live in Magdeburg with their two young daughters, discuss returning to Syria nearly every day following the AfD’s electoral gains. Akhras, a doctor completing specialist training in internal medicine who wears a hijab, stated that she encounters hostility while shopping and no longer feels safe leaving home after dark following the election.
It’s bad — we’ve built our lives here, we really loved being here, but now we don’t feel welcome anymore.
Ola Akhras, resident of Magdeburg
Undra Dressler, executive director of the Saxony-Anhalt State Network of Migrant Organizations, reported that counseling centers are extremely busy, the phones are ringing off the hook, counseling appointments are fully booked, and people are in great need of counseling and support
as immigrant families weigh their options. Dressler noted that while some residents have already left or are considering departure, others have decided to stay and engage actively against the party’s remigration platform.
According to a survey by the Mediendienst Integration research group, more than one in four doctors, or 27.1%, in Saxony-Anhalt’s hospitals did not hold German citizenship as of this August amid a broader shortage of skilled labor in Germany’s eastern states.
Which lawmakers cast the four unexplained votes for Rausch, and how will federal conservative leaders respond to the pressure on the political firewall?
