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Erika Steinbach at the party conference: "I just don't want to stand by and watch our beautiful country being ruined into the abyss"
Photo: Matthias Balk / dpa
The former CDU politician Erika Steinbach failed in her application for a top position in the AfD.
At the federal party conference of the AfD in Riesa, the 78-year-old lost in a contested vote for the vice party chairmanship with 42.2 percent to Peter Boehringer (55.4 percent) of the Bundestag.
Stephan Brandner (72.4 percent) and Mariana Harder-Kühnel (74.6 percent) were elected as further Vice Chairmen.
Steinbach only became an AfD member this year;
However, she had been committed to the party since she left the CDU in 2017.
“I just don't want to stand by and watch our beautiful country fall into ruin,” said Steinbach in Riesa, explaining her application.
Millions of citizens are standing on the "economic abyss" and freedom of expression is "under more pressure than ever before in the history of the Federal Republic," she lamented.
Steinbach has been chair of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation since 2018.
In January, after the previous AfD leader Jörg Meuthen left the party, she announced her entry into the party.
She had previously had a long career in the CDU - in 1990 she became a member of the CDU Bundestag and in 2000 she was elected to the CDU federal executive board.
In 2017 she left the CDU.
The conservative politician justified the step at the time primarily with her criticism of Angela Merkel's refugee policy.
Steinbach had previously been President of the Association of Expellees for a long time.
Chrupalla and Weidel at the top of the party
Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, with whom Chrupalla also jointly leads the parliamentary group, will continue to lead the party in a dual leadership.
At the delegates' meeting, which lasts until Sunday, the entire federal executive board, which last comprised 13 members, will be reassigned.
This will also decide on the future course of the AfD - depending on how many representatives of the respective party current can secure a post in the body.
Chrupalla has been at the helm since November 2019.
In his first election at the party congress in Braunschweig at the time, he got 54.5 percent of the votes.
The master craftsman from Saxony led the AfD alone after the departure of ex-co-boss Jörg Meuthen.
Meuthen had certified the AfD an increasingly radical course.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the party as a suspected right-wing extremist.
svs/AFP