- Chancellor Merz said he was deeply concerned and somewhat appalled after AfD's candidate won speaker with cross-party support.
- Secret ballot showed at least four non-AfD lawmakers backed Tobias Rausch, raising suspicion that some CDU members broke the non-cooperation firewall.
- Merz warned of political false flag operations and accused Die Linke and fringe groups of undermining democratic cohesion.
- Rausch's election could clear the path for the AfD regional leader to become state premier, the first far-right government in Germany since the Nazi era.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed shock Wednesday that the far-right AfD had secured support from other parties to win a key post in a state parliament for the first time.
Merz also pushed back at speculation that members of his Christian Democrats (CDU) had been among those supporting the far right, accusing others of seeking to unfairly pin the blame on his party.
The chancellor told an event in Berlin that he was “deeply concerned and somewhat appalled” after the AfD’s candidate for parliament speaker in Saxony-Anhalt state was elected with support from other parties.
Tobias Rausch was backed by local lawmakers for the post Tuesday as the parliament convened for the first time since the AfD’s landslide victory in the state last month.
While this was expected after a small far-left party had agreed to support him, the results of a secret ballot also showed at least four lawmakers from other parties had given him their backing.
This prompted speculation that some CDU members could have backed Rausch.
This would have been a breach of the so-called “firewall” policy of non-cooperation with the AfD, which is usually followed by Germany’s mainstream parties.
However Merz said that “false flag operations do not exist solely in the military realm; they exist in politics, too”.
A “false flag operation” is an action that is designed to appear as if it was carried out by someone other than the perpetrator.
Merz then attacked the far-left Die Linke, claiming the party, along with other fringe groups, “are doing everything they can to undermine the cohesion of our democracy”.
Rausch’s election potentially paves the way for the AfD’s regional leader, 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, to become Saxony-Anhalt’s state premier in December.
That would be the first time since the Nazi era that a far-right party has governed a German state.
The AfD has been steadily gaining in national polls, and scored several electoral successes this year, often at the expense of Merz’s CDU.
Merz, meanwhile, has become the least popular chancellor in German post-war history after less than a year and a half in office while battling economic stagnation and political difficulties.
