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The government crisis in Saxony-Anhalt shows how difficult it is in the East to forge stable coalitions without the AfD and the Left Party. Some municipalities and states are threatened with ungovernability.
By Kristin Schwietzer, ARD capital studio
Lutz Trümper takes his hat. The SPD mayor of the city of Magdeburg no longer wants to govern. The message breaks into the coalition dispute in Saxony-Anhalt. You might overlook it, as a side note, while Kenya’s coalition of CDU, SPD and Greens in Saxony-Anhalt is on the verge of breaking down. Both events show similarities. How to deal with difficult majorities? And how do you deal with an AfD that tries to boost all the other parties by voting with one and the other?
Tattered party scenery
After the 2016 state elections, Kenya was the only possible coalition in the democratic center. In Magdeburg, the party landscape has deteriorated since the 2019 local elections. The SPD, the mayor’s party, is surrounded by the CDU, the Greens, the Left Party, AfD, FDP, the alliance for the welfare of the animals and the small parliamentary group. That makes the government difficult. Trümper has recently had several projects voted on.
In his angry speech, he addresses the Party of the Greens and the Left: just to avoid a development plan, they would have voted together with the AfD or at least they would have let the AfD vote. “And then to ask me to coordinate everything – left, AfD, Greens and SPD – someone has to explain to me how it works. This situation is gradually becoming unbearable for me. So, according to Trümper, “there will be no more firewalls here in the city hall.”
Captured CDU and FDP
In the East, this problem is revealed as under a magnifying glass. Here, above all, the bourgeois camp is caught between the Left Party and the AfD. Both sides reject cooperation with the left and the right. After the electoral debacle in Thuringia, the CDU and the FDP reaffirmed. But some parts of the Eastern CDU associations feel the corset is too tight.
Mike Mohring was one of the actors from Erfurt. It cost him his positions, his parliamentary group and the party presidency. Today he says: “We have a polarization in society, but apparently also in the electoral results.” The Left Party and AfD would win many mandates in the East. “And that’s a special situation and you can easily comment on it from the comfort zone in the West, but it’s actually different in the East and you have to find your own answers to that.” Even if they are often a litmus test for the CDU.
CDU is having a hard time with the Left Party
The Thuringia CDU decided to support the left-wing state government in important decisions. That awakens the minds of Christian Democrats in the East. The relationship with the Party of the Left is difficult and historically founded. Many here still see the Left Party as the successor to the SED. The CDU sees itself as a “party of German unity”. Even 30 years later, the opposites are still insurmountable.
The CDU and the FDP also reject the alliance with the partly right-wing AfD. A dilemma for state and local politicians. Dirk Bergner is deputy leader of the FDP parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament. He says: “For us that means that we have to act in a parliament in which the left and the AfD together have more than 50 percent. Then there will be no resolution or a bill without the approval of the left or the AfD. And you have to work a little more calmly in order to change majorities ”.
Self-discipline instead of Berlin guidelines?
Be more relaxed with the Left Party and the AfD? You don’t like to hear that in Berlin. Since the election of the FDP’s top candidate, Thomas Kemmerich, as prime minister with AfD votes, the relationship with the Thuringian state association has been broken. Here one has the feeling that the federal party has an answer to what it should not be, but not to what happens when ungovernability threatens.
The political scientist André Brodocz says before the decision of incompatibility of the CDU:
“A decision of the federal party on the whole party, including the municipalities in the end, is very difficult. That decision must be taken separately at each political level The municipalities also, when possible for themselves, with regard to the respective associations locals. In my opinion, it would be a better strategy. ”
Brodocz does not want to open the door to the AfD in general. Rather, he believes in a kind of self-discipline. So state and local politicians would very well consider who is politically acceptable to them and who is not, without pressure from the party headquarters.
You can get more information on this topic today at 6:05 pm at Report from Berlin.
