Now these two items are on the agenda for the next meeting, again: election of a vice-president of the state parliament and election of a member of the parliamentary control body (PKGr), which oversees the protection of the constitution. The AfD wants to send candidates back into the race for both posts, for which none of their innumerable proposals have received a majority since 2018. What is new is that this time there will be a debate on this, the AfD is said to have successfully applied for this in the Council of Elders – a sharp debate is to be expected. It is also noticeable that the parliamentary group tries again with both posts at the same time. According to reports, this is the prelude to a kind of attrition tactic – henceforth to be nominated and voted on in a continuous loop. One after the other, so you can hear, “until everyone had a turn”.
It is still unclear who wants to become Vice President on Tuesday, Uli Henkel from Munich is aiming for the PKGr. He has scheduled a press conference on Monday. It is about the performance of the AfD “delegated tasks”, he says when asked. If 89.8 percent of the MPs “band together” to prevent this, “a democratic deficit is to be located”. Henkel sees “a community of prey that wants to keep us away from the cake”, specifically from the PKGr, so that the “instrumentalization” of the protection of the constitution against his party remains a secret.
In previous elections, the other parliamentary groups had always denied the suitability of the AfD candidates. “The decisive factor is of course the integrity of the people to be elected,” said Tobias Reiss, for example, parliamentary managing director of the CSU, in the spring: “After the AfD repeatedly attracts attention through parliamentary misconduct, targeted provocations, scandal and scandals, I can well understand that our MPs do not elect anyone from the AfD for these functions. ” In the summer there was also a joint declaration by the CSU, Free Voters, Greens, SPD and FDP on the occupation of the PKGr. In it, for example, the Green Vice-Parliamentarian Thomas Gehring said that “access to such highly sensitive, security-relevant and confidential information” should only correctly be given to members of parliament “who enjoy the unreserved trust of the majority in parliament”. In political Munich, another reading of the announced applicant offensive of the AfD is circulating, apart from the permanent stage. One hears: “The parliamentary group is probably lurking in the debate for awkward formulations or slip of the tongue in order to challenge the decision in court.” So far, the AfD has not had legal success here.
Henkel is now even bringing an alleged key witness for the “exclusion” in the field, the former Federal President Joachim Gauck. He was recently a guest at the opening of the touring exhibition “Places of Democracy in Bavaria” in the Maximilianeum, the AfD man spoke to him, and there was a brief conversation in the state restaurant. The retired Federal President had “very clear words about the situation I complained about”, writes Henkel on Facebook, Gauck was therefore “not a friend of the AfD”, but he was of the opinion that every “democratically elected party” had a right to a representative in the presidium, whether in the Bundestag or in state parliaments. Gauck also called for this in a book.
Joachim Gauck’s office confirmed the conversation at the request of the SZ. D. “Skepticism” expressed in the book and in interviews, “that representatives of a party elected in democratic elections are withheld from meeting the parliamentary rules of procedure”. However, the former head of state does not want to see himself understood as helping Henkel and his colleagues: “Mr. Gauck rejects the content of the AfD and considers it politically dispensable,” it says. The decision as to whether or not to elect candidates for the AfD rests “exclusively on the MPs themselves”. According to Gauck, this is “by no means” undemocratic, “on the contrary, a decision made democratically”.