German parliament gets sneak preview of the AfD show

Germany’s new parliament hasn’t even met yet but the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is already proving disruptive, as the Bundestag struggles to accommodate the right-wing party.

کد خبر: ۷۳۶۸۴۰

تاریخ: ۱۷ مهر ۱۳۹۶ - ۰۸:۳۳

As they prepare for their inaugural session on October 24, the mainstream parties consider it a provocation that the AfD, which like every group has the right to nominate one MP as a vice president of the assembly, has chosen 75-year-old Albrecht Glaser for the role.

A member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) for 40 years, Glaser helped found the AfD in 2013 and made headlines earlier this year by saying Muslims living in Germany should lose their right to freedom of religion as, in his view, their faith does not respect that freedom.

Cue outrage from the other five groups in the lower house, which said such sentiments make him unfit for the role of vice president of parliament. Merkel’s conservatives (the CDU and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) were slower to condemn him than the others, but eventually joined the chorus of disapproval.

"I will not vote for someone who wants to strip an entire group of people of the expression of their fundamental rights,” CDU/CSU group leader Volker Kauder said Thursday. "We have to be clear but also calm when it comes to dealing with the AfD,” he added, to justify his group’s tardy response.

The Glaser case demonstrates the dilemma Germany’s mainstream parties face in their dealings with the anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic party, which won seats in the Bundestag for the first time. They all want to signal clearly that they consider the far-right party to be beyond the pale for Germany democracy. At the same time, they can’t be seen actively sabotaging a party that won the votes of millions of Germans on September 24.

If they take too aggressive a stance with the party, it could backfire and help boost the AfD’s popularity, which has its roots in voter dissatisfaction with established parties, including Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD). Senior MPs from across party lines agree the best tactic will be to ignore the AfD’s provocations as far as possible, though that may be easier said than done.

Clues from the regions

Nominations for the Bundestag vice presidencies require the approval of a majority of all sitting members of parliament, meaning they all need support from MPs beyond their own faction.

"It’s clear that the AfD is entitled to this post. There must not be any debate on this,” said Fedor Ruhose, who manages the SPD bloc in the regional parliament of Rhineland Palatinate, which the AfD entered in 2016 with 12.6 percent of the regional vote — the same amount the party scored on the national level in September’s general election.

"But if someone like Mr. Glaser wants to take up a function in the parliament outside of the AfD’s group, it also has to be legitimate for MPs to say that, for certain reasons, they cannot vote for him.”

Since it was founded as a Euroskeptic response to the eurozone debt crisis, the AfD’s evolution into a more right-wing party with an anti-immigrant focus has helped it build a grassroots presence and take seats in 13 of the country’s 16 state assemblies. This means the German political system already has a wealth of experience in dealing with the party that could be passed on to the Bundestag in Berlin.

"In the parliaments, the AfD is in a permanent campaign mode,” said Ruhose, who analyzed the party’s performance for Das Progressive Zentrum, a Berlin-based think tank with links to the SPD.

Ruhose said the Bundestag should brace for a profound change in the style of debate, which tends to be ponderous and serious-minded, when the newcomers take the floor.

"Heckling and calls to order will increase,” he said. "And I could also imagine that, just like in the regional parliaments, [the AfD] will criticize the chairmanship of the Bundestag president.”

A far-left precedent

Germany’s current finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who is poised to become the next president of the German parliament, has already made it clear that he is prepared for unruly parliamentary sessions in coming years with the AfD as the third-largest group.

So far, Glaser — who did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article — has remained largely silent on the controversy surrounding his nomination. On Friday, the AfD group in the Bundestag issued a written statement rebuking the criticism as "factually unfounded” and saying that "both Mr. Glaser and the AfD stand behind the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Basic Law [Germany’s constitution].”

The AfD’s insistence on its candidate leaves Bundestag officials wondering what will happen if Glaser fails to get elected to the vice presidency by a majority of his cross-party peers when they meet on October 24.

A precedent from 12 years ago could offer clues.

Back in 2005, far-left party Die Linke nominated Lothar Bisky for a vice-presidential post in the lower house, but controversy over Bisky’s activities during the communist regime in East Germany led to a  Bundestag vote against him.

For months, the post remained empty – until Die Linke, out of the blue, nominated Petra Pau as their new candidate, and she was immediately elected into office.

Bundestag officials believe something similar could happen with the AfD, but they caution privately that this could feed into a "victim myth” being fuelled by the party, enabling the right-wingers to portray themselves as victims of hypocritical barriers to freedom of opinion inside the democratic institutions.

What’s certain is that the Glaser case is likely to be just the prelude to a series of provocations from the AfD, whose top candidate in the general election, Alexander Gauland, celebrated his party’s triumph last month by announcing that the AfD would spend the next four years "hunting Frau Merkel.”

The SPD’s Ruhose said the far-right party has taken full advantage of every opportunity to take the floor in regional parliaments "to put on a show.”

"We have to brace ourselves for this in the Bundestag too — and we need to deal with it calmly,” he said.