A power struggle is raging in the AfD after the federal executive board, with a small majority, has thrown Kalbitz, Brandenburg's former head of state, out into the far-right milieu because of contacts. AfD boss Meuthen already considers the internal competition to be decided.
Berlin / Potsdam (dpa) - The AfD chair Jörg Meuthen wants to have a showdown if necessary with the supporters of the thrown out Brandenburger Andreas Kalbitz.
A special party convention called by some was "actually a very good idea to clarify the majority situation," said Meuthen to the magazine "Cicero". "I know the majority of the party behind my course," he replied when asked whether he would be re-elected party leader despite the argument.
At Meuthen's behest, the AfD federal executive had declared the membership of the former state party and faction leader Kalbitz to be void on Friday with a majority decision - because of contacts in the far-right milieu. Alongside Björn Höcke, he is considered the most important representative of the party's formally disbanded right-wing national wing, which the constitutional protection agency is observing as a right-wing extremist movement. After Kalbitz's expulsion, an open power struggle broke out in the AfD.
The AfD parliamentary group is behind their previous boss. Parliamentary Managing Director Dennis Hohloch said on Monday "that we need an extraordinary party congress at the federal level to demand that the federal board be voted out". Kalbitz is still part of the group - the rules of procedure have been changed. Kalbitz wants to take legal action against the expulsion. The question of whether he will remain at the head of the parliamentary group has been postponed until the legal questions regarding the decision of the federal executive board have been resolved.
According to Thuringia's AfD party and faction leader Höcke, the power struggle is about the "basic content". "In the past few days, as a member of the AfD, I had the feeling that my party had been attacked," he said in a video of the right-hand publication "Deutschland Kurier", which was distributed on YouTube and Facebook, among others. Under the leadership of Meuthen and Beatrix von Storch, there is a majority on the AfD federal executive board that "is not capable of compromise - at least it seems - who wants another party that wants a cold party, a market radical party."
Meuthen said to the "Cicero": "The community of attitudes surrounding Björn Höcke's ideas has never had a majority." Meuthen does not assume that the AfD is threatened by a split: "I believe that in a short time we will see that the excitement in the party will subside because we are making a firewall to the right and effective."
Meuthen's co-chair Tino Chrupalla and the parliamentary group leaders Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel also believe the majority decision of the federal executive board is wrong. Meuthen criticized Gauland: He had always held his hand protectively over Kalbitz and the wing. "He wrongly assumes that the cancellation of Mr. Kalbitz's membership will not last. But he is wrong."
The provisional Brandenburg AfD head Birgit Bessin - previously Kalbitz's deputy - wrote on Facebook that Kalbitz did not have to disclose his former membership with the Republicans, "because he had become a member of the party before the statutes were passed, and therefore there was no legal basis for a disclosure obligation gave".
According to the spokesman for Höcke's Thuringian state association, Stefan Möller, Kalbitz's dismissal from the AfD was "a major political mistake". However, the courts would provide clarification in this case, Möller told the German Press Agency.
Cicero interview Meuthen
Facebook page AfD Brandenburg
