Shortly after his election at the weekend, the new CDU leader drew a red line to the AfD. “All flirting with these people only leads to misery for us,” said Friedrich Merz on Saturday. That’s why his message is: “We’re not working together, there’s no agreement.” Just three days later, however, things were not looking good for the new party leader’s hard line.
Because with the controversial head of the ultra-conservative value union Max Otte, a CDU member of all people is to become an AfD candidate for the election of the Federal President. He gladly accepts the AfD nomination, said Otte in the afternoon at a joint appearance with Tino Chrupalla, co-head of the party, and parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel in the Bundestag. “I consider the proposal a great honor,” said Otte, adding that he wanted to set an example, for example against the decline of the middle class and for freedoms. He wants one instead of dividing. The office is above the parties.
The announcement triggered violent protests in the Union. The CDU prepared a party exclusion procedure on Tuesday. The Cologne CDU, together with the state association and the federal party, are striving for such a procedure, announced a spokeswoman for the district association. “Anyone who cooperates or works with the AfD cannot remain in the CDU,” said the CDU general secretary, Paul Ziemiak. In the evening, the federal board of the party wanted to connect to discuss further action against Otte.
Leading Union politicians called for his expulsion. The candidacy violates all the rules and “would clearly be behavior that is harmful to the party, which would necessarily lead to an exclusion,” said the parliamentary manager of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei (CDU). “The outgoing CDU party leader Armin Laschet called the nomination “a disgrace”. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst also said that Otte no longer had any place in the Union.
Six out of ten AfD board members voted for Otte
However, the hurdles for a party expulsion are high. In the CDU, this has also been discussed for a long time in the case of the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen. The Union could keep the staff busy for a long time. Because Otte explained that he saw no reason to leave the party and immediately delivered new provocations. The CDU politician sharply criticized the fact that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution wanted to classify the entire AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist. He is concerned that the domestic secret service is becoming “government protection”. That’s not his job. The former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, announced in the course of the heated argument that he would be leaving the Union of Values – because of Otte. “It is unacceptable that a member of the Union can be nominated by the AfD as a candidate for the Federal President,” said Maassen.
The AfD leadership had nominated Otte on Monday evening after long debates at the top of the party with a narrow majority. According to participants, six of the ten board members were in favor of the nomination. The vast majority of the 16 AfD state spokesmen had previously voted for the 57-year-old economist. Only the state associations of Rhineland-Palatinate and Hamburg were against it.
The Union of Values, which Otte chairs, has around 4,000 members and has proclaimed itself a “grassroots movement”. In the Union, however, it does not play a major role. It is also not officially recognized as a CDU group. Otte was also controversial for a long time in the Union of Values itself, and in autumn 2019 she wanted to have him expelled from the CDU. At that time, after the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke, Otte spoke of hate speech against rights. Otte later deleted the tweet and apologized to the family. In the Union it was said on Tuesday that the events should also lead to the CDU in the future delimiting itself even more from the entire union of values.
The nomination is the result of years of contacts. Otte has had close ties to the AfD for a long time. From June 2018 to January 2021 he was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (DES). However, he was forced to leave after campaigning to include the disbanded and right-wing extremist “wing” within the party. This was rejected by other parts of the DES leadership.
The personnel is also considered a directional decision in the internal AfD power struggle. Party leader Tino Chrupalla had proposed Otte against the will of Jörg Meuthen, who was still co-boss, and his camp, which was moderate by AfD standards. Otte had criticized Meuthen for his party strategy in the past. He therefore spoke out internally against Otte’s election and warned of a “pipe burst”. However, Meuthen was unable to secure a majority against Otte in the most important AfD committee. Meuthen had already announced his departure from the AfD leadership at the next party congress – also because the influence of his camp was recently waning.
The election of the Federal President will take place in the Federal Assembly on February 13 – incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier is standing for a second term. His re-election is considered certain. The AfD gets a little more than 150 of the almost 1,500 votes in the Federal Assembly. The AfD candidate has no chance.