Thuringia, this regional state of the former GDR where the election results do not allow a classic coalition, concentrates the questions which shake Germany, while the traditional parties are losing momentum. The CDU, Chancellor Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat party, is particularly shaken.
Controversy erupted Saturday within the CDU over a regional alliance project with Die Linke, (literally "The Left"), making this weakened party a little more pitched. It comes in the immediate wake of another controversy around the positioning of the CDU, this time with regard to the extreme right, which has already cost its post to AKK (Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer), its federal president.
The Thuringian conservatives had allied with Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) to elect a liberal leader at the head of Thuringia. An inconceivable alliance for the Chancellor and the CDU of Berlin in a country marked by its Nazi past. And the liberal Thomas Kemmerich to resign.
The last battle was triggered by the decision on Friday evening of the elected members of the party in Thuringia to support the planned election on March 4 of an official of the radical German left, Bodo Ramelow, at the head of this regional state. The local CDU is ready to tolerate for a year a left-wing minority government with this elected member of the Die Linke party at its head, before new regional elections scheduled for April 25, 2021.
But by acting in this way, the elected officials have freed themselves from the official line known as the “ni-ni” of the Chancellor's party: no alliance, neither with the extreme right, nor with the extreme left, issued in Germany from the party Communist of the East German dictatorship which fell in 1989. The Thuringian CDU acted in this way in an attempt to lift this region from paralysis, into which the AfD first plunged it.
Schäuble and the scarecrow of the ex-communist party
CDU leader in Berlin Kai Wegner denounced him a "stab in the heart of our party", while the conservative president of the chamber of deputies, Wolfgang Schäuble, rejected "any cooperation between the CDU" and Die Linke, who "legally is still the old SED", the former Communist Party of the GDR.
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The line of "ni-ni" however becomes increasingly difficult to maintain by the German Christian Democrats, in a national political landscape fragmented by the electoral push of the extreme right, which complicates the formation of majorities at all levels . The radical left considers it "defamed" to be put on the same level as the AfD, especially since the racist attacks in Hanau this week.
The CDU leaders themselves go so far as to accuse this anti-migrant party of harboring "Nazis" or "fascists" within it. In addition, Bodo Ramelow is a pragmatic and moderate, far removed from the heirs of the East German Communist Party.
These eddies may further complicate the search for a new CDU president. The party must in principle reveal the names of the contenders and the calendar on Monday. Faced with internal tensions, the choice could be postponed until the end of the year, with an interim collegiate presidency in the meantime.
