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Saxony-Anhalt's Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff (CDU) during the second ballot in the Magdeburg state parliament
Photo:
Ronny Hartmann / dpa
Things could hardly have gone better for Reiner Haseloff in the past few months.
With him at the top, the CDU won the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in June with a surprisingly clear 37.1 percent.
In addition, he agreed with the FDP and SPD on a coalition that has a comfortable majority in the state parliament.
Even black and red alone would have had a narrow majority, but Haseloff probably suspected how insecure this alliance would have been.
That's why he wanted the FDP with him.
This means that the state should be governed smoothly in the coming years, so the belief.
And the re-election as prime minister should only be a matter of form.
But now Haseloff had to learn bitterly in the state parliament that stumblers can occur even where he does not expect them.
Haseloff fell through in the first round of the election as head of government.
Only 48 out of 97 members of the state parliament voted for him, there was no vote for the necessary majority.
The coalition of CDU, SPD and FDP has 56 votes.
Eight MPs therefore refused to support Haseloff.
Coalition members report that the state parliament was shaken.
One and a half weeks before the federal election, the own prime minister will be damaged.
The fact that Haseloff was still elected in the second ballot was little consolation.
Two theories about dissenters
The time of the political wobbly games seemed to be over.
Haseloff ruled for five years with a fragile Kenya coalition made up of the CDU, SPD and the Greens.
As early as 2016, two attempts in the state parliament were necessary for his election as head of government.
In the coalition there has been a severe crisis over the years - which was not least due to the stubborn CDU parliamentary group.
Some of them wanted to work with the AfD.
The parliamentary group vices Ulrich Thomas and Lars-Jörn Zimmer wrote in a strategy paper that they wanted to reconcile the "national" with the "social".
At Haseloff's instigation, both were no longer reassigned to the posts.
When the interior minister and Holger Stahlknecht, who once acted as Haseloff's successor, pondered the dispute over the radio license fees over a minority government, Haseloff threw him out of the cabinet.
The Prime Minister followed a clear anti-AfD course in the election campaign and was able to feel confirmed by the clear election victory.
This security is now gone.
Rumors are circulating in the Magdeburg state parliament about who might not have voted for Haseloff.
Two groups are particularly suspected.
On the one hand, there are the supporters of the former Crown Prince Stahlknecht.
But the relationship between him and Haseloff had cooled down anyway.
As CDU state chairman, Stahlknecht was unable to get a grip on the right-wing debate in his party.
The forced departure from the cabinet followed, which led to the rupture.
Stahlknecht resigned as CDU country chief.
Now the ex-minister sits as a simple member of the state parliament.
How he and one of his followers voted is unclear.
Nobody wants to come out publicly as a deviator.
At the request of SPIEGEL, Haseloff's old enemies also assert on the phone that they had elected the old and new prime ministers.
The liberals can feel like the winner of the day
On the other hand, the Social Democrats are also suspected of not having supported Haseloff in the first ballot.
In order to be able to stay in government despite the miserable result in the state elections, they had to step back significantly and, for example, give up the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The new CDU state chairman, Sven Schulze, is supposed to lead - so that the possibly future top candidate of the Union sits in the influential position.
In a survey, SPD members spoke out in favor of the German coalition.
But even the former state chairman Burkhard Lischka publicly admitted to having voted against it.
So it is quite possible that Social Democrats in the Haseloff faction also refused to give their approval in the first ballot - even if the SPD parliamentarians assert that it was not their fault.
The liberals can feel like the winners of the day.
They are not suspected of deviating from them, but their role in the coalition became clear.
The assumption that in case of doubt they would not be needed for a majority anyway has proven to be unjustified.
It even turned out the opposite: In case of doubt, Haseloff has to rely on their votes.
For the re-elected Prime Minister, the coming legislative period could be more uncomfortable than expected.
On one side of Haseloff's coalition is the SPD, which will not put up with everything from the CDU.
This is likely to cause further dispute.
On the other hand, Haseloff's opponents are in their own ranks, who will squint at the toxic temptations of the AfD at any unpleasant compromise. So it could be that Haseloff's new German coalition turns out to be just as bellicose as his old Kenya coalition.