Bavaria
AfD: Daniel Halemba returns party offices
Daniel Halemba also suspends his membership rights in the AfD. photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
The federal AfD has called for the expulsion of the Bavarian MP Halemba. The state executive board is having a procedure examined. Halemba himself takes a first step – but has to fear more.
“In order to prevent damage to the AfD, I am giving up all party offices with immediate effect and will also forego exercising my membership rights within the AfD until further notice,” the statement said. “As part of a party procedure, I will face all allegations and help clarify them. I am confident that all open questions will soon be clarified.” The party offices he is giving back are the AfD district chairmanship in Würzburg and an office in the Lower Franconian AfD district executive committee.
Bavarian AfD is examining party exclusion procedures
Immediately beforehand, the AfD state executive committee had decided to examine party expulsion proceedings against Halemba. The state executive board has unanimously decided that general counsel Ferdinand Mang should hire a lawyer to “review and, if necessary, prepare” the party exclusion proceedings against Halemba commissioned by the federal executive board, state chairman Stephan Protschka told the German Press Agency in Munich.
The state executive board is not immediately complying with a corresponding request from the AfD federal executive board to initiate proceedings, but is having this examined. The demand was justified by the federal executive board with Halemba’s violations of the AfD’s rules, which would have led to the admission of members in violation of the statutes in the run-up to two meetings for the state elections in Bavaria.
The AfD federal executive board had also demanded that the regional association also apply to the responsible regional arbitration court for Halemba’s immediate exclusion from exercising its membership rights. The request was made to “initiate party expulsion proceedings against Mr. Halemba and to immediately revoke his membership rights,” said party and parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel in Berlin. However, there was no mention of such a step in Protschka’s announcement.
Investigations against Halemba
The Würzburg public prosecutor’s office is also investigating the 22-year-old for incitement to hatred and for using the symbols of anti-constitutional organizations. An arrest warrant applied for against him was suspended subject to certain conditions. Halemba himself rejects the public prosecutor’s allegations. He has not yet commented specifically on the internal allegations.
Last week it also became known that the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution had been monitoring the Teutonia Prag zu Würzburg fraternity, to which Halemba belongs, since the beginning of December. This also applies to the AfD as a party in the Free State.
According to the Würzburg public prosecutor’s office, a guest book was confiscated from the fraternity’s house during a raid in September. Inside was the entry “Sieg Heil”, signed with Halemba’s name. In the room occupied by the 22-year-old, a printout of an SS order from SS chief Heinrich Himmler from October 1939 with a so-called double sigrune was discovered.
CSU state parliamentary group leader Klaus Holetschek says Halemba’s consequences are not enough. “If he gives up his party positions, he has forgotten something crucial: his state parliament mandate. Given the seriousness of the allegations, he must resign from that immediately,” said Holetschek. AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner must “take a clear position here and can no longer remain silent.”
Should Halemba have to leave the party and parliamentary group now or later, this would have an impact on the balance of power within the opposition in the state parliament. The AfD and the Greens currently have the same number of representatives there. However, because the AfD ended up ahead of the Greens in the percentage result in the state elections, the AfD, as the strongest opposition party in percentage terms, is entitled to some special rights, such as the right of first reply to government declarations. If the AfD were to shrink, the Greens would be the largest opposition faction.