AfD success in Saxony
Non-partisan, but in line: This is what can be expected from Pirna’s new mayor Tim Lochner
Watch the video: Germany’s first AFD mayor – “I will definitely increase the logic factor in the town hall.”
Video source: rtl.de
Tim Lochner is the first AfD candidate to win a local election in Germany. What can be expected from Pirna’s new mayor – and what powers does he have?
It is an important propaganda success for the AfD: with Tim Lochner, the right-wing party won a local election in Germany for the first time. 38.5 percent of voters in Pirna, Saxony, voted for the 53-year-old as the new mayor on Sunday. Lochner is not a member of the party whose regional association the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution considers to be definitely right-wing extremist. But the local politician apparently does not want to distance himself from the ideology of his colleagues.
“If we have a proportion of foreigners in certain parts of the city, which is proven to be 38 percent in primary schools and daycare centers, then for me that is already an exchange of the local population,” said Lochner after the election to MDR, repeating a statement from his election campaign. The “population exchange” tale is one of the most powerful conspiracy stories in the right-wing extremist spectrum. When asked about this, Lochner, a master carpenter, replied that he had commented as a private person.
Lochner wants to check city employees in Pirna for loyalty
This sentence from Lochner also raised eyebrows among his democratic competitors in the city of 40,000 residents: “I will try to get to know the employees in the town hall individually if possible – and check for loyalty,” he quoted MDR the future head of administration. What exactly Lochner meant by that was left open. In any case, it must be examined whether the staff increases in recent years have made the administration “closer to the citizens,” Lochner told the DPA news agency.
More than 250 people currently work in the city administration of Pirna. As a full-time mayor who is elected in Saxony for seven years, Lochner will be her superior in the future. This means that he can issue instructions and enforce their implementation with disciplinary measures – or punish non-compliance. Of course, even a head of administration cannot simply dismiss unpleasant employees.
timeline
From euro opponents to the case for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution: How the AfD has become more and more radical for years
Saxony’s Greens react with concern to the election in Pirna
It is unclear what influence the AfD’s right-wing extremist ideology will have on political events in Pirna in the future. Even if Tim Lochner seems to share the party’s core beliefs, he has not yet stood out as a hardliner. Lochner was still a member of the until 2016 CDU, he has so far refused to join the AfD: “I was previously a member of the CDU, but I returned the party membership. Now I no longer want to be a party member,” the “Welt” quoted him as saying. Lochner has been a member of the Pirna city council for many years. In the 2017 election, he clearly failed due to the then non-party incumbent Klaus-Peter Hanke.
Representatives of other parties expressed concern about Lochner’s election victory. “The election of a mayor of a party that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified as right-wing extremist last week dismays us,” wrote the Saxon state association of the Greens on X (formerly Twitter). “We must now do everything we can to strengthen our coexistence and strengthen trust in our democracy again.”
Why China’s Communist Party should be happy about Lochner’s election victory
Last week, the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD in the Free State as definitely right-wing extremist. After Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, the Saxon AfD is already the third state association with such a classification. This means that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution can use secret service resources to obtain information about the state association’s extremist activities.
The Chinese Communist Party is likely to be happy about Lochner’s election victory. According to research by the news portal t-online, Lochner maintains close relationships with the AfD MEP and member of the AfD federal executive committee, Maximilian Krah. Lochner traveled to China with Krah in November 2019, where he met a party organization awarded the title of “Ambassador of the International Friendship of Lishui”. A town twinning between Pirna and Lishiu, a city with 2.5 million inhabitants, was also discussed.
After the 2019 trip, Lochner complained about resistance in the Pirna city administration to cooperation with China, according to t-online. If he becomes mayor, he would like to resume these plans. However, his closeness to Maximilian Krah could still become a problem for Lochner: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies Krah’s statements as ethnic-nationalist and anti-constitutional. The China admirer Krah is also controversial within the party: his book “Politics from the Right: A Manifesto” is clearly “anti-conservative, anti-bourgeois and anti-Western,” wrote AfD member of the Bundestag Norbert Kleinwächter in a review of the book.
source: MDR/ t online/ world.de