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The new chairman of the city council in Gera: Reinhard Etzrodt (AfD)
Photo: Bodo Schackow / dpa
The AfD has made party history in Gera.
With 23 of 40 votes, the city council elected the former doctor Reinhard Etzrodt from the AfD as chairman of the city council on Thursday evening.
As far as is known, he is probably the first to hold such a post in Germany.
This was not possible without the help of the competition, because the right-wing populists only have twelve seats on the city council, so their candidate got eleven more votes.
Even if one assumed - which is not likely - that all representatives of the smaller, local groups voted for Etzrodt, that would mean that at least two representatives of the parties represented in the Bundestag - i.e. from the CDU, SPD, Left, Greens or FDP - must lifted the AfD man into office in a secret vote (see graphic below).
The process causes controversy in Gera.
Because, of course, it does not want to have been any of the parliamentary groups that repeatedly assert that they will not do anything together with the AfD.
Now a small Kemmerich storm is blowing through the country in Thuringia.
In Gera, of all places, the short-term FDP Prime Minister Thomas Kemmerich walked through the city with right-wing populists and corona deniers in May.
The International Auschwitz Committee called Etzrodt's election "undignified and historically forgotten".
It means a "collapse in credibility and a destabilization of democracy," said the committee's vice-president, Christoph Heubner.
The post on Gera City Council had been vacant for 15 months.
The reason for this was the first right to propose the chairman of the city council, which is provided for in the statutes, which is laid down in Gera for the strongest parliamentary group - currently the AfD.
This regulation has never been questioned, but now the other parties have questioned its legality in order to be able to make someone from the middle of parliament its chairman.
The chairman of the city council is the highest representative of the local parliament, he chairs the meetings and can issue calls for order.
The independent mayor had taken over the function by Thursday.
But now, after months of discussion, the state administration office had created legal clarity in a letter.
According to the result, the regulation of the first right of proposal is legal.
That the AfD man would get a majority, however, allegedly hardly anyone expected.
Left leader Hennig-Wellsow attacks CDU
The left accuses the CDU the loudest of having elected the AfD candidate.
"The election of an AfD man as chairman of the city council is not a normal process, but promotes normalization and thus the trivialization of the extreme right-wing Höcke party," said left-wing country leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow the SPIEGEL.
"After the Kemmerich Pact in February, the CDU Thuringia has a special obligation to bring about trust on our part in its understanding of democracy."
The CDU must provide clarity against right-wing extremism.
Ann-Sophie Bohm-Eisenbrandt, chairman of the Greens, sees it similarly: "In an election like this one cannot refer to democratic practice. It is dangerous for a democracy if democrats support a party that in the past did not stand for democracy is. "
She asked the CDU to work up the process internally.
The state CDU rejects any allegation.
"The CDU parliamentary group in Gera has clearly agreed in advance not to vote for the AfD candidate in this election and also adhered to it," said the newly elected Thuringian CDU general secretary Christian Herrgott.
Country chief Christian Hirte also assured: It was not his party.
In Gera itself one does not believe the union's oaths.
"If Red-Red-Green did not vote for the AfD candidate, which is to be assumed, there must have been mathematical votes from the CDU for Etzrodt. So that is clear," says the left city councilor and member of the state parliament Daniel Reinhardt.
AfD man thinks support from the left or the SPD is conceivable
Even in the Thuringian CDU there is a suspicion that the party friends may have approved the AfD city council chairman.
The AfD in Gera includes tough right-wing extremists, but also a comparatively large camp of seemingly bourgeois rights, including former FDP politicians.
CDU City Council parliamentary group leader Christian Klein asserts that his parliamentary group did not vote for the AfD man.
Who else should it have been?
"We will not participate in this speculation," says Klein.
He does not want to allow the fact that the CDU has already submitted several applications to the city council with the AfD as an indication.
"As the CDU, we do not submit any applications with the AfD alone. On individual issues, however, we do not deny Red-Red-Green or the AfD cooperation on factual issues. The content is the focus for us as local politicians."
However, there is no institutionalized cooperation with the AfD and there will not be, said Klein.
In the coming week, for example, you will also submit an application with the SPD.
The CDU also refers to the Eisenach case, where an SPD application with alleged support from AfD and NPD caused a scandal.
The Christian Democrats also recall the election of the AfD vice-president in the Thuringian state parliament, whom the left-wing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow had given his vote for for various reasons.
In the AfD one speaks triumphantly of a "big signal".
Diether Laudenbach, AfD city councilor in Gera, is demonstratively surprised by the discussion: "I don't know whether the CDU voted for our candidate, and I think it is very conceivable that the votes will also come from the left or the SPD."
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