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Thorsten Frei would find Otte's candidacy "completely unacceptable"
Photo: Frederic Kern / imago images/Future Image
Max Otte, CDU member and head of the controversial Values Union, is to run for the AfD as a candidate for federal president.
In this case, from the point of view of Union faction manager Thorsten Frei, a regulatory procedure against his party friend would be inevitable.
Frei, first parliamentary manager of the Union parliamentary group, told journalists: "A candidacy for another party is always party-damaging behavior." Should Otte actually run for the AfD, according to Frei, that would be "absolutely unacceptable and would have to have rapid consequences".
The CDU politician went on to say: "I don't see any legal problems there." When asked, he made it clear that "this would have to lead to an exclusion".
criticism of Maassen
The planned nomination of Ottes by the AfD also concerns another CDU member who is anything but undisputed in the party.
The former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg-Maassen, described it as "completely unacceptable" that Otte, as head of the Values Union, "allows the AfD to nominate him as a candidate for the office of Federal President and that the Board of Values Union tolerates that."
Otte does not rule out running for the AfD as a candidate.
"Being offered the candidacy for President is one of the greatest honors that can happen to you," he told the German Press Agency.
»The office offers the chance to heal, to reconcile, to admonish.
I consult with my family and think about it intensively.«
Otte has been said to be close to the AfD for years.
In 2017 he told the “Wirtschaftswoche” that he would vote for the AfD in the federal elections.
Until January 2021, Otte was also chairman of the board of trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation.
Otte himself says that he is a "rock-solid and rock-solid" member of the CDU.
Otte's line-up is purely symbolic: the AfD only has 152 of 1,472 seats in the Federal Assembly on February 13.
He should not have a chance against the incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose candidacy is supported by the SPD, Greens and FDP as well as the Union.
Otte is not the only candidate against Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Left Party sends the operator of the Mainz "doctor's mobile" for the homeless, Gerhard Trabert, into the running for the election to the Federal President.
Trabert is the founder of the association "Poverty and Health in Germany" and holds a professorship for social medicine and social psychiatry at the Rhein-Main University of Applied Sciences.
flo/svs