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Chancellor Olaf Scholz has described the results of two state elections in east Germany that saw massive gains for populists as “bitter” and warned mainstream parties against forming coalitions with “rightwing extremists”.
The Alternative for Germany won the election in Thuringia, the first time a far-right party has secured victory in a state election in the country’s postwar history. In the neighbouring state of Saxony the AfD came second to the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), garnering 30.6 per cent of the vote, just behind the CDU’s 31.9 per cent.
The election was a disaster for the three parties in Scholz’s coalition, his Social Democrats, the Greens and the liberal FDP, which all saw their share of the vote slump. The Greens and FDP did so badly that they will no longer be represented in the Thuringian parliament.
“The results for the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia are worrying,” Scholz said in a statement, stressing that he was speaking as an SPD lawmaker rather than as chancellor.
“Our country cannot and must not get used to this,” he went on. “The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining the country’s reputation.”
Exit polls showed voters expressed their frustration with a government they associate with high inflation, economic stagnation, surging energy costs and internal squabbling.
They also voted in large numbers for parties that are sceptical about military aid for Kyiv and economic sanctions against Russia and want to see a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.
Voters also accuse Scholz’s government of failing to get a grip on irregular immigration, an issue that took on greater urgency after last month’s terror attack in the western town of Solingen when a suspected Isis member fatally stabbed three people and injured eight others.
Sunday’s results were also good for the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a populist leftwing party that, like the AfD, wants tougher curbs on immigration and often parrots Kremlin talking points on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The BSW came third in both eastern states, ahead of the three parties in Scholz’s coalition.
Wagenknecht, the alliance’s eponymous leader, is a former member of the East German Communist party known for her best-selling critiques of capitalism. She said the election results reflected “dissatisfaction with the way this government is just ignoring the will of the people, be it in immigration, energy or social policy”.
She said food prices had risen 33 per cent in the past two years while people’s purchasing power had sunk. “In such a country one shouldn’t be surprised that the government parties are punished,” she added.
Speculation had increased ahead of Sunday’s election that a poor performance by the SPD, Greens and FDP could trigger the break-up of Scholz’s coalition and snap elections.
Though the FDP and Greens did poorly, many in the SPD greeted the results with relief: there had been fears they would fall below the 5 per cent threshold to ensure a presence in the Saxon and Thuringian parliaments.
Scholz said the “gloomiest predictions about the SPD were not fulfilled”, adding: “It shows that it’s worth fighting.”
Many political analysts still wondered whether pressure might build on the SPD to emulate the Democrats in the US by ditching Scholz as their candidate for chancellor in next year’s election.
But SPD co-leader Saskia Esken put paid to those rumours. “Olaf Scholz is a strong chancellor who will also lead us into the Bundestag election campaign as candidate for chancellor, and together with him we will win that election,” she said on Sunday evening.
But some SPD officials said it was time for the party to be more assertive, and to stand up to the much smaller FDP, a fiscally hawkish party that runs the finance ministry and has resisted all attempts to loosen Germany’s strict rules on new borrowing.
Kevin Kühnert, SPD general secretary, said the party should no longer accept “having the mickey taken out of us by others who have just crashed out of regional parliaments”.
In Saxony and Thuringia attention turned towards forming new coalition governments, a complex task in both states given that no mainstream party is prepared to work with the AfD.
Thuringia, in particular, will require new coalitions. The CDU might be able to cobble together a working government with the BSW and SPD, but even that will be one seat short of an absolute majority in the regional parliament. It might also require the tacit support of the hard-left Die Linke.
The BSW has also presented tough conditions that could prove unpalatable to the CDU.
Wagenknecht said on Monday that her party would only support a government that rejected the stationing of US medium-range missiles in Germany, a move agreed between Scholz and US President Joe Biden at a Nato summit this summer.
“It must also say clearly that it wants to see more diplomatic initiatives from the federal government to resolve the war in Ukraine,” she said.
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