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Former AfD politician Andreas Kalbitz: No candidacy in the Bundestag constituency 65
Photo:
RONALD WITTEK / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
For weeks, there was speculation in the AfD whether Andreas Kalbitz would run as a direct candidate in Brandenburg's 65th constituency.
There was unrest in parts of the party, and several party members wrote letters calling on the federal executive to prevent this.
They feared that the former AfD state and parliamentary leader in Brandenburg could become a burden for the party in the upcoming election campaign.
Kalbitz had lost his membership last May at the instigation of AfD co-party leader Jörg Meuthen by a narrow majority decision of the federal executive committee, among other things, he was accused of having concealed membership in the neo-Nazi HDJ and the Republicans when he joined the party in 2013.
Kalbitz continues to take legal action against his expulsion, but most recently he lost court proceedings.
Now Kalbitz has made a decision: He will not run as a direct candidate.
He now wrote on his Facebook page that he had decided to do so after "careful consideration".
After the »ongoing panic reactions of parts of the federal executive committee, such as the ban on me from appearing against the AfD state executive committee in Brandenburg, it cannot be ruled out that this candidacy may serve as a template for the serious sanctions of the district associations involved and the state association of Brandenburg up to their dissolution could «, continued Kalbitz.
Kalbitz has been a non-party member of the AfD parliamentary group in Potsdam since late summer last year.
Most recently, Kalbitz also appeared at AfD events in his home association.
It was not until February 8 that the federal executive board had passed a further resolution in the Kalbitz case and then sent it to the AfD state executive in Brandenburg by letter.
The state association and the subdivisions that Kalbitz had "invited to speak" and had "performed" would have "significantly damaged" the AfD's reputation. In the event of a repetition, the federal board reserves the right to take "regulatory measures," it said in an email from February 10th to the committee.
Kalbitz also announced on Saturday that he would continue to argue for his return in court.
The AfD leadership had recently speculated about a waiver by Kalbitz in the so-called main proceedings before the Berlin district court.
Kalbitz now writes that despite his rejection of his candidacy, his commitment to the AfD "will not change anything for me personally either before or after the pending court decision on my formal AfD membership."
Contrary to the statements made by the lawyer for the federal executive committee, this is "mainly just before the start," says Kalbitz, underscoring his will to continue fighting legally.
Although Kalbitz is no longer an AfD member, his entry on Facebook reads as if he were still active in the party.
He is already looking at the federal party congress after the federal election in November, at which AfD co-boss Jörg Meuthen and the other members of the currently split federal executive committee will have to be re-elected according to schedule.
"The coming milestone and fork in the road," said Kalbitz, will be the "upcoming reorganization of the federal executive committee" in November in order to regain "stability, unity and reliability both internally and externally," he writes.
AfD convention for the return of Hartwig in AG-Verfassungsschutz
Meanwhile, the Meuthen supporters suffered a defeat at the Federal Convention - a kind of small party conference of the AfD - this weekend.
As reported from party circles and confirmed to SPIEGEL, the convention called on the federal executive committee on Saturday at its meeting near Dresden to reconsider the dismissal of Roland Hartwig as head of the constitutional protection working group in the AfD and to correct it if necessary.
The motion, which was accepted by majority vote, was submitted by the Lower Saxony member of the Bundestag Armin Paul Hampel - Meuthen's opponent for a long time - and several officials from Lower Saxony.
In December, at the request of AfD chairman Jörg Meuthen, the federal executive elected the lawyer Knuth Meyer-Soltau from North Rhine-Westphalia as the new head of the group.
The co-chairman Tino Chrupalla voted against Hartwig's replacement at the time.
The working group was founded in September 2018, and the AfD member of the Bundestag Hartwig had become its chairman.
It is tasked with dealing with the subject of "possible observation by state offices or the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution".
The AfD as a whole party still has the possibility of being classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected case in the area of right-wing extremism.
The party is currently defending itself against this with an urgent procedure that has not yet been completed before the Cologne Administrative Court.
The "wing", to which Kalbitz and the Thuringian state and parliamentary group leader Björn Höcke once belonged as leading figures, officially disbanded last April after the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had previously classified the internal network as right-wing extremist.
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