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Plenary hall of the Saarland state parliament
Photo: Oliver Dietze / picture alliance / dpa
The Saarland AfD is running for the state elections in Saarland on March 27 without a state list.
A state election proposal submitted to the state returning officer by the deadline was withdrawn on Tuesday, the state returning officer said in Saarbrücken.
The deadline for submitting nominations expired on Thursday.
The state chairman of the AfD Saarland, Christian Wirth, was dismayed.
"I'm in shock," he said.
He didn't know that two members of the provincial executive had arbitrarily exchanged shop stewards, who then "tacitly" withdrew the list on January 18.
»That is a huge damage to the image of the voters.
Many will now say: You can't choose them," said Wirth.
According to Wirth, the reason for the secret withdrawal of the list was that the four AfD members involved did not like the top candidate Kai Melling, who was elected at the end of November.
The votes would now be distributed among the district electoral lists, they said.
Despite the lack of a state list, the AfD can still be elected in all constituencies.
A party can also run only with constituency nominations.
According to Saarländischer Rundfunk, 41 of the 51 seats in the state parliament are occupied by the district lists, the rest by the state lists.
There are three constituencies in Saarland.
A decision on the approval of these lists is to be made on January 26th and 28th.
In the state elections in March 2017, the AfD in Saarland received 6.2 percent of the votes.
This is the first time she has entered the Saar state parliament with three members.
ulz/dpa