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According to information from SPIEGEL, the left-wing Thuringian state deputy Steffen Dittes does not want to submit to the security check provided by the state protection of the constitution.
Dittes was elected to the Parliamentary Control Commission (PKK) in the state parliament. Until now, all members have always undergone the review of the security authority, it is said.
Members of the PKK have access to secret information related to the protection of the constitution. As a general rule, the Minister of the Interior informs them about events on a monthly basis.
The former Parliamentary Oversight Commission is still meeting in Thuringia, as the AfD successfully demanded the creation of the new body last week through an urgent motion.
So far, no deputy from the AfD has been elected to the five-member commission, as all of the party’s proposed candidates in parliament failed. The access of the AfD to the PKK is also considered delicate by other parties because the entire regional association of Thuringia AfD is run by the state protection of the constitution as a suspect case in the area of right-wing extremism.
When asked, Dittes said that the security check on PKK members was, in his opinion, a “faulty practice” and referred to a law that exempts parliamentarians from a security check.
As vice president of state, Dittes is in contact with the party’s internal communist platform, listed in the 2019 report on the protection of the constitution under the item “Extremist structures of the DIE LINKE party.”
For years there has been a discussion about Dittes and the protection of the constitution in Thuringia. In 2002, CDU Interior Minister Christian Köckert obtained information from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution about the then 28-year-old PDS member of the state parliament, Dittes.
The security authority had created a personal file on him. Dittes says this “is not related to any security clearance and my assessment of it” as this information is already public.
Dittes is considered a possible successor to the presidency of the party and the parliamentary group in Thuringia, should Susanne Hennig-Wellsow be elected federal president of the left. The election will take place at the Congress of the Federal Left Party at the end of October in Erfurt.
