The AfD in the state parliament continues to shrink, the Lower Bavarian MP Josef Seidl has resigned from the party and will soon be formally leaving the parliamentary group. The SZ learned this unanimously from AfD circles. Accordingly, health reasons should have triggered the withdrawal. Seidl himself could not be reached on Tuesday. The 58-year-old was recently absent due to illness, but had also been absent before. With the departure of the heating and ventilation engineer from the constituency of Dingolfing, the AfD-internal alliance, which secured all positions on the parliamentary committee about two months ago, will lose a comrade. The AfD parliamentary group has long been split into two camps.
You automatically have to leave the parliamentary group when you leave the AfD. The board now wants to take note of the resignation in a meeting, then the official report will be sent to the state parliament office. The decision was not yet available on Tuesday lunchtime, but Seidl’s request to change the email address was already there. A spokesman for the group said when asked that it was a “personal decision”. The board will not comment on this, especially not before a statement by the MP himself. Seidl is a member of the building committee and also works on energy policy, he has hardly appeared in the media since 2018. He had supported the then boss Katrin Ebner-Steiner when the parliamentary group was founded, but later switched to the, until recently, inner-opposition group.
It will be the fourth exit from the parliamentary group since it was founded, of the 22 AfD MPs from 2018 there are still 18. Very early on, Markus Plenk and Raimund Swoboda became non-attached, they criticized political disputes and “right-wing extremist” tendencies; At the end of 2020 at Ralph Müller, it was strategic and personal differences that should have affected the regional association more than the parliamentary group.
We’re talking about “zero fuss”
There was no dispute about direction, there was no animosity behind it at Seidl, you can now hear: “Nothing happened.” Rather, the withdrawal suggests an “emergency measure for self-protection”. Sepp Seidl allegedly tends to get “terribly upset” about his political opponent, sometimes about his own people. He is also said to have long since left internal chats to avoid any excitement. We are talking about “zero excitement”, which is recommended by a doctor. Seidl recently had to deal with conflicts in the Lower Bavarian district association, which some in the AfD regard as a “cauldron”. Why Seidl is not giving up his mandate remains unclear. In the earlier resignations, many had demanded this, as those who were eliminated would only sit in the state parliament via the AfD ticket. In the case of Seidl, it could be relevant that the successor on the list is assigned to the camp of the völkisch “wing”.
In the parliamentary group, the leadership around the new chairmen Christian Klingen and Ulrich Singer will then have ten people, the counter-camp around the voted Ebner-Steiner and Ingo Hahn will have eight. Despite the change of power, the blocs are in place, but no external conflicts have recently been resolved. Those who have been voted out sometimes vote with the majority, sometimes they test out the unity of the others. A two-thirds majority would be required for an overthrow. However, Seidl’s farewell could make itself felt in everyday voting. If someone in the majority camp is absent from the state parliament due to illness or possibly because of displeasure with the corona rules, you would be at stalemate. It is entirely conceivable that this leeway will be used.