parties
Weidel: Decision on AfD candidacy for chancellor will come later
Alice Weidel, together with Tino Chrupalla, forms the dual leadership of the AfD. photo
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
It is still unclear whether the AfD will again enter the federal election campaign with a “top duo” or whether it will nominate a candidate for chancellor. The co-chair says that this also depends on “real power options”.
She wants to talk about a possible candidacy for chancellor According to the party leader, AfD will decide in a year at the latest.
The AfD’s federal party conference after next will probably take place in March or April 2025 “and that will be decided there at the latest,” said Weidel in a video interview with the German Press Agency. Many questions have to be taken into account when making this decision: the wishes of the party base, the poll numbers and the question of “what real power options do we have”.
Weidel does not expect a change at the top of the party
Before the next federal party conference, at which a new federal executive board is to be elected in Essen at the end of June, Weidel says he wants to discuss with co-chair Tino Chrupalla what happens next for both of them and then make a corresponding proposal to the delegates. “I think the dual leadership is going very, very well, both at the party leadership and at the parliamentary group leadership,” said Weidel. When asked whether a change at the top was conceivable, she replied: “I don’t think so.” And added: “We would like to continue with the dual leadership.”
On the personnel issue in the case of a candidacy for chancellor, Weidel, who has been co-chair alongside Chrupalla since June 2022, said: “If we decide to run for chancellor, the relevant candidates will have to discuss beforehand who will do it, and that will then be at the federal party conference suggested.” She doesn’t expect an argument with Chrupalla about this. Chrupalla and she make “almost all decisions by consensus,” said Weidel. “Of course it also depends on the majority within the party.”
Before the 2021 federal election, the AfD members Weidel and Chrupalla were elected as the “top duo” without naming either of them as a candidate for chancellor. In nationwide voter surveys, the right-wing populists were recently at around 19 percent, putting them in second place behind the Union, which got just under 30 percent. The next federal election is scheduled for fall 2025.
Sympathy for Maaßen and Wagenknecht
When asked whether the AfD had more in common politically with Hans-Georg Maaßen’s Union of Values or the new Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), Weidel said that her party had “the greater overlap, purely programmatically” with the Union of Values. But we have to wait and see how the new party develops. She likes both Wagenknecht and Maaßen. Weidel left it open whether she personally met the BSW chairwoman or the ex-president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. She said: “I talk to a lot of people.” And: “I don’t want to comment on that.”
“I met Ms. Weidel at the last World Week Festival in Zurich,” Maaßen reported when asked. It has been known since February that the Federal Office is keeping an eye on its former president and is storing Maaßen data in the authority’s information system in the area of right-wing extremism.
When asked, Wagenknecht said she had already met Weidel on a talk show. “I would of course discuss with her again in such a format if we were invited,” said the former left-wing politician.
Weidel wants to take part in proceedings against the Office for the Protection of the Constitution
The oral hearing in an appeal process began before the Higher Administrative Court in Münster on March 12th, in which the AfD is suing against its classification as a suspected right-wing extremist case by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which was confirmed by the Cologne Administrative Court. Neither Weidel nor Chrupalla was there on the first two days of the trial. It is not yet known when the hearing will continue. “We will be there from time to time in the future – there are many trial days scheduled, and then I will definitely be in Münster,” announced the party leader in the dpa interview.
In Münster, federal executive board member Roman Reusch dismissed radical statements made by some AfD officials, which the intelligence service’s representative cited as evidence, with the argument that some members may not have the education necessary to correctly assess the significance of such terms. That probably didn’t go down well with everyone in the AfD.
Weidel stood behind Reusch. The AfD leader emphasized that she was grateful to Reusch, who is a former senior public prosecutor, for conducting this trial on a voluntary basis. “He also thought something of it, so at some point certain statements may no longer be able to be defended in any other way.”