2024-09-02 06:11:24
After the state elections in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia, Amira Mohamed Ali, co-chairman of the left-wing populist alliance BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht), showed she was fundamentally opposed to an alliance with the CDU Be open-minded. “There are similarities and there are significant differences,” she said Monday. Saxon Chancellor Michael Kretschmer (CDU) believes that a coalition with the Social Democrats and the Socialist Workers Party is possible in his country.
“It won’t be easy, it will take time, but it is possible,” Kretschmer said on Deutschlandfunk the morning after the election. According to preliminary results, his Christian Democratic Union has just become the strongest force in Saxony with 31.9% of the vote (2019: 32.1%), followed closely by the Alternative for Germany, with 30.6% of the vote (27.5% ). The new BSW reached 11.8% from the start. The SPD’s support rate was 7.3% (7.7).
BSW co-leader Muhammad Ali said: Whether we can truly find each other will only be clear during alliance negotiations. Mohammad Ali has ruled out an alliance with the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany TV channel “Morgan Magazine”. BSW boss Sahra Wagenknecht made a condition of the state-level alliance that potential alliance partners reject the deployment of US medium-range missiles in Germany and further arms shipments to Ukraine. Regarding foreign policy demands, Mohammad Ali said it now depends on “possible coalition partners” – first and foremost the CDU – “whether they can imagine it”. Muhammad Ali said we were hearing “signals” from Kretschmer, specifically that “he actually owns the position.”
In Saxony and Thuringia, the newly formed BSW achieved double-digit results from Sunday’s start. In Saxony, the CDU won the election ahead of the AfD, while in Thuringia, the AfD won by a clear margin.
Kretschmer emphasized: “I want to serve this country, and I want to give this country a stable government.” He is likely to continue to serve as the country’s prime minister. The CDU politician stressed that achieving this goal would not be easy and could mean months of negotiations with possible coalition partners. The question now is to “take a deep breath” and be happy that Saxony has managed to form a stable government.
The CDU is still a long way from coalition negotiations. When the time comes, his party will put its “values guide” on the table and then negotiate. “Party ideology” will have to take a back seat. “We’re talking about content,” Kretschmer emphasized. Regarding possible cooperation with BSW, he said: “We are not in alliance with Ms. Wagenknecht, but with the people who were elected to the Saxon state parliament.”
When dealing with the AfD, Kretschmer advised against using the term “firewall” because the party uses the term for its own benefit. “The Alternative for Germany is a master at portraying itself as a martyr,” the chancellor said. This affects some voters. Such terms are not helpful. The Alternative for Germany is “an opposition party like other parties, with all rights and obligations.”
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel is optimistic she will be involved in forming governments in Saxony and Thuringia after the party’s good performance. “We have to state that without the AfD there is no stable majority,” she told German TV channel Morgensmagazine on Monday. She doesn’t believe the “undemocratic firewall” can be maintained. Wedel said that without the AfD, only a left-wing majority was possible; voters did not want that. If the CDU and BSW formed a coalition with Thuringia’s left-wing parties, they would lose credibility in the long term. Wedel said that the voters of a sovereign state chose a “centre-right coalition with a bourgeois majority” in the two federal states. The fact that the AfD retains 30% of the electorate cannot be ignored.
Wedel added that a traffic light government at the federal level in Germany had been voted out. “No one wants this kind of green policy in federal politics anymore, and certainly no one wants this kind of green policy in state politics.” The way must now be cleared for new elections.
In Thuringia, BSW Governor Katja Wolf is skeptical of a possible minority government. She told the German news agency in Erfurt that a minority government “is not a good option” in the current situation. She also heard a lot of consensus from other parties that “minority governments, like what we have experienced over the past five years, must not have a political future in Thuringia.” So you have to quickly join the discussion “and explore some possibility” ”.
At first glance, it looked like the CDU, Socialists and Social Democrats might have a majority on election night, but it is now clear that this will not be enough. In Thuringia, it is impossible to form a coalition with a majority without the participation of the AfD or the left. A coalition of the CDU, Socialists and the Left is theoretically conceivable. However, the incompatibility decision prohibits the CDU from cooperating with the AfD and the Left.
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