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New AFD Vice Presidential candidate in the Bundestag: Right charm offensive

2019-09-25T08:22:54.643Z


Again, the AFD Group is trying to get a Bundestag Vice President. All previous candidates fell through, this time put the right-wing populists on emphasized friendliness. Does it help?



It is an unusual measure with which Paul Viktor Podolay advertises on its own behalf. He recently wrote a letter to the deputies of the Bundestag, sometimes even with a handwritten addition in the form of address. "I would be very happy about your support and your vote", he says, "for further questions he is happy to be at your disposal".

Paul Viktor Podolay, 73 years old, Member of the German Bundestag and Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, wants to become Parliament Vice-President. For the German-Slovak has launched a charm offensive, including a booklet with a detailed curriculum vitae and his likeness. He "allowed" this, because for the election in plenary "no idea of ​​the candidate is provided," it says with great courtesy.

Should he make it to the presidency in this way, it would be a novelty, so far fell all three AFD candidates in plenary.

The election of an AfD representative to the presidium remains highly controversial. According to the rules of procedure of the Bundestag, each parliamentary group is entitled to a seat in the parliamentary presidium. In addition to the President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), he also owns five CSU, SPD, Grüne, Linke and FDP Vices. However, the AfD candidates - Albrecht Glaser, Mariana Harder-Kühnel and most recently Gerold Otten - did not receive the necessary majority of votes in three ballots each.

Although there was support from ranks of the Union and FDP for Harder-Kühnel and Otten, because some of the AfD do not want to get the martyr status. However, many MPs have refused to send a representative of the party to the panel - for reasons of principle or under the impression of the AfD's steady course of law.

Well, it should be Podolay for the AfD. With some deputies - including the Greens - he duzt himself. But are sympathy enough for an election as Vice President? An opposition parliamentarian who knows him, but does not want to be named, notes: "People like Podolay will someday regret that they have embarked on a party like the AfD".

Podolay: "I'm not a fan of the wing"

Podolay is in the AFD since 2015. Until then, he spent 16 years in the CSU, "more or less passive member," as he tells the SPIEGEL. CSU and CDU had drifted "far to the left, that was no longer my idea of ​​a conservative party". At first, Horst Seehofer scolded the Chancellor, spoke of the 'rule of injustice' in the refugee question, threatened a constitutional complaint, later she was the best chancellor. "That did not work for me anymore," he explains his change.

DPA

AfD MP Podolay: "The first President of the Bundestag has reported."

But what about an AfD, in which after the Landtagserfolgen of the nationalist nationalistic network "wings" the influence of the right wing outside Andreas Kalbitz and Björn Höcke has grown? "I'm not a supporter of the 'wing', everyone in the AfD knows that, I'm conservative-liberal, so I see the majority of AfD as bourgeois, the few screams that exist are not the whole AfD", Podolay tells the MIRROR.

Podolay has sent a leaflet with his biography. There, MEPs learn that he was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, fled Czechoslovakia in 1982 with his wife and two children to the West, worked in the medical industry, and since 2002 has been President of the German-Slovak Economic Union. The former cardiologist also mentions that he drove car rallies in Czechoslovakia for 20 years and got to know his wife.

His letter action did not go unnoticed. "The President of the Bundestag, with whom I spoke for about three quarters of an hour, was the first to report." Talks have been with MPs from the SPD, FDP, CDU, CSU and the Greens, he says.

If necessary, Podolay wants to go into all three possible ballots. The first is expected to be this Thursday, about five weeks before the state election on October 27 in Thuringia. This could be a disadvantage, he admits, "because maybe the other parties want to signal once again against the AfD, regardless of my person".

In the third ballot - which is likely to take place later - he would only need the relative majority of votes. But little speaks for a success of this variant. Symptomatic of this is the reaction of Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki. The FDP politician had declared in March before the failed election of Harder-Kühnel that party affiliation alone was not a criterion for him.

Under the influence of many AfD speeches he has modified his attitude, referring to the first article of the Basic Law, which states that "human dignity is inviolable", "respecting and protecting" it is the task of "all state power" , He does not want, says Kubicki to SPIEGEL, "that a parliament to which I belong is represented by the representative of a party in which well-known persons permanently violate this principle, which supports our constitutional order."

With this attitude Kubicki should not be alone in the Bundestag.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-09-25

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