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The AfD politician Matthias Joa (r.), Here at a party event in Haßloch, resigned from his party
Photo: Michael Debets / Pacific Press Agency / imago images
The AfD MP in the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, Matthias Joa, has announced his departure from the party and parliamentary group. In a letter addressed to the President of the State Parliament, Hendrik Hering (SPD), among others, he explained this by saying that for him, "as a conservative and a democrat," limits in political work had been exceeded. This reduces the number of AfD parliamentary group members from nine to eight. Previously, the newspaper »Rheinpfalz« reported on the exit.
Joa referred, among other things, to the eastern regional associations of the party, "which obviously have no problem with actual right-wing radicals and not only tolerate them, but consciously integrate them."
Within the party, he had "repeatedly campaigned for a moderate course, but unfortunately now has to recognize that large sections of the party are hardly capable of differentiated thinking," he wrote.
In the letter dated September 3, Joa also criticized its own regional association in Rhineland-Palatinate.
"We now have people on the AfD state executive who definitely have no business in a democratic party," he wrote.
He named the Bundestag member Sebastian Münzenmaier and the parliamentary manager of the AfD parliamentary group, Damian Lohr.
He also addressed his letter to these two AfD politicians.
Almost half a year after the state elections, the AfD parliamentary group started to develop like in the previous electoral period, in which the number of the originally elected 14 members fell to eleven.
Most recently, the MP Timo Böhme announced his resignation from the party and parliamentary group in December last year.
He spoke of an "obvious division" that is shaping the party at the moment.
At the end of August, the former AfD parliamentary group leader Uwe Junge announced that he was leaving the party.
dak / dpa