Now Paul Podolay must also be counted among the ranks of failed AFD candidates for the office of Bundestag Vice President. He is the fourth candidate the AFD set up for the post, but so far she has failed to come up with any of her suggestions. So also with Podolay: The 73-year-old received in the vote in the Bundestag 214 votes against him voted 397 MPs with 33 abstentions. He clearly missed the required quorum of 355 votes.
In early June, the former AFD candidate for the post of Bundestag vice-president, Gerold Otten, failed in the third attempt. In the parliamentary plenum he missed again the necessary number of votes. Previously, AfD candidates Albrecht Glaser and Mariana Harder-Kühnel had each failed three times (you can find out more about the background here).
Podolay was born in 1946 in Bratislava, Slovakia. The trained medical technician was, according to his website from 1997 to 2015 member of the CSU. In 2014 he became an independent candidate of the SaS party in Slovakia in the European elections. He has been an AFD member since 2015, and ran in the constituency of Erlangen as a direct candidate.
According to the rules of procedure of the Bundestag, each parliamentary group is entitled to a seat in the parliamentary presidency. The deputies are nevertheless free in their voting decision.
