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Directive from the board: AfD national spokesman Tino Chrupalla
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Political-Moments
It is a problem that has been preoccupying the Lower Saxony AfD for months: Did the list for the federal election come about under legal circumstances or were 24 members not properly invited to the election meeting?
A question that led to deep disagreements.
Now the AfD federal executive has decided in a face-to-face meeting for the new election of the list.
In the decision, the committee called on the AfD state board to "coordinate all the measures necessary for the implementation of a new assembly meeting of a Lower Saxony state list in advance with the federal office - in particular the hall organization, the dispatch of invitations and the accreditation".
In addition, the resolution stipulated that the new election - like the first - must be held in attendance.
The now obsolete list was chosen six months ago.
Joachim Wundrak, once Lieutenant General of the Bundeswehr, became the top candidate of the Lower Saxony AfD for the federal election in December.
With 283 to 229 votes he prevailed against the former state chairman Armin-Paul Hampel.
Soon after Wundrak was elected - in contrast to Hampel, he is a supporter of co-federal chairman Jörg Meuthen - accusations were raised in the deeply divided state association that not all of the approximately 2,400 voting members had received an invitation to the assembly meeting.
Specifically, it was recently about 24 people, as can be seen from the correspondence between the state party and the state returning officer, which SPIEGEL has received.
Affidavits
Most recently, two affidavits from employees of the AfD federal office, which concerned the 24 affected members, were sent to the state election control. But even these insurances have not brought any clarity from the point of view of the state election officer Ulrike Sachs, as her letter of June 3 to a representative of the state party shows. It is "still unclear whether the party invited all voting party members to the assembly meeting or whether legally possible or organizationally reasonable measures have been neglected," it says in their letter. Sachs referred to her letter from the beginning of May. In it, Sachs had again informed the party: “Whether the Lower Saxony state election committee would come to the conclusion thatthat the regional association - although the loading period was still running - failed to take organizationally reasonable measures to invite all party members, cannot be forecast. "
It was an indirect reminder to the AfD address that the state election committee at its meeting in summer might not be able to give the green light for the state list for the federal election.
The AfD in Lower Saxony is now under time pressure with the renewed election of a state list.
Because by 19 July - at the latest »at 6 p.m. - the state election control in Lower Saxony must be presented with the evidence of the state list - and this is legally secure.
A legal expert had recently also given the AfD state executive a warning: the risk of non-approval of the candidate list by the state election control was too high, it said in his report.
"Conspiratorial" parallel structures
New reports on the establishment of parallel structures within the regional association also put the Lower Saxony AfD in trouble. Under the designation "Patriots", a group that emerged from the officially disbanded right wing "Wing" is said to have tried bypassing the elected district associations to reactivate old wing structures. This was reported by the political journal »Rundblick« as well as WDR and NDR with reference to recordings of a meeting in February and an affidavit from one of those present. According to this, state board members and several members of the Bundestag are said to have attended the meeting in Verden.
"I congratulate us on reactivating the old wing structures," says a recording available to NDR and WDR, after which so-called regional coordinators were elected at the meeting.
The parallel structures went “100 percent” to the AfD district associations and would have to be “conspiratorial”.
The coordinators are now "elected representatives of the patriotic camp."
The aim of the new structures is to win majorities.
"Of course we don't call it what it used to be, we then somehow call it different." According to NDR and WDR, the statements are attributed to a member of the state board.
Nicolas Lehrke, general secretary of the Lower Saxony AfD, said that there were no more "wing" structures and would no longer exist under the state chief Jens Kestner.
In March 2020, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the "wing" as a right-wing extremist movement.
The network founded by Björn Höcke in 2015 then announced its dissolution under pressure from the party executive committee.
However, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution was unimpressed.
Constitutional Protection President Thomas Haldenwang said in December that the group had "formally dissolved, but the personal network continues to operate in the background."
At the request of the dpa news agency, security circles said it was assumed that the so-called wing "continues to operate until today."
sev / mrc / dpa