Who should lead the Bavarian AfD as a prominent face in the state election campaign? Or to put it better: How many? That should be clarified at the weekend at a party conference in Greding, Middle Franconia. Now there is a proposal on the table, according to which there should be a team with up to eight top candidates – namely the list leaders in the seven districts plus the acting parliamentary group leader Ulrich Singer (in Swabia only in second place). The parliamentary group wants to present this tableau to the members on Saturday. It is completely open, however, whether the advance will prevail – or whether open power struggles will break out.
“From our point of view, it makes no sense to poster someone from Berchtesgaden to Aschaffenburg if they are not eligible for election in most of Bavaria,” says the parliamentary manager of the parliamentary group, Andreas Winhart. He is number one in the Oberbayern list, so he would belong to the team of many heads. Winhart commented on this when asked at a press conference during the plenary week. It is assumed that the party congress will follow the idea. Despite “some differences” in the past, it was decided very unanimously in the group. The feedback from Bayern-AfD indicates that the proposal will fall “on fertile ground”.
Really? The situation does not appear to be that clear. In 2018, the party could not and did not want to agree on one person who would represent the entire AfD in Free State; above all because of the directional struggle between the more moderate camp and the folkish “wing”. As an emergency solution, a man who never ran for parliament in Bavaria was on television at the time: the then state head and member of the Bundestag Martin Sichert. The current state chairman Stephan Protschka, also from the Bundestag, would “wish” for a central face of his party. He has recently emphasized this again and again, even speaking of a “prime ministerial candidate” in an internal letter to members a few months ago.
On Wednesday, Protschka told the SZ that “personally he” still prefers a clear top candidate. But he could also live with the constellation proposed by the parliamentary group. But there may be “even more suggestions” from members in Greding. If necessary – “if no one can be found” – he would also get involved himself. Perhaps that’s why Winhart had mentioned as a precaution: There is absolute agreement that “only someone who is already in the parliamentary group or is applying for the state parliament can represent us credibly to the outside world”.
“The members should decide,” says Parte
Andreas Winhart is parliamentary director of the AfD in the state parliament and top candidate in Upper Bavaria. He supports the idea of a top team.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
Ichef Protschka, that is grassroots democracy that only exists in the AfD. The fact that all members are allowed to come and vote at state party conferences ultimately makes things imponderable. Anyone who asks around in AfD circles will get many arguments against a frontman in the election campaign: that “no lead dancer” is needed, that no one has emerged who really has what it takes to be a national draft horse. That someone elected in Greding would only have a little more than 50 percent backing anyway. And that the whole thing only fuels the eternal camp dispute, which has just been laboriously dimmed out of discipline in the election year. But it’s also circulating: Maybe someone is secretly renting buses to cart their own troops to Greding. In order to “take over the party congress” and surprisingly become number one.
The AfD also wants to decide on its election program at the weekend, Winhart is the head of the commission. The work this time was apparently a broader process than in 2018. At that time, the program was cobbled together so quickly and carelessly that some members were ashamed of the draft – it was better “not to bring it to the people unnecessarily”, it was heard.
Consensus should prevail at the party conference on migration. The lead motion speaks of “mass immigration from other cultures”, wants to “stop the Islamization of our living environment” and calls for “a Bavarian deportation rate of 100 percent for all persons who are not entitled to stay”. The Lower Franconian list leader and domestic politician Richard Graupner said at the press conference with Winhart in the state parliament: Too many “foreigners” are coming to the country, “you just have to go through the inner cities”. Migration has long been noticeable in schools and kindergartens, “there is no longer a question of who integrates whom”.
The attitude to Russia’s war of aggression could be explosive, as is the case with the party as a whole, there is also a rift with the Bavarian AfD. The leading motion criticizes the “partisanship of the federal government for Ukraine” and calls on the Bavarian state government to condemn the arms deliveries. Among other things, the members will discuss whether Putin’s attack should still be described as “violating international law”.