A traffic sign saying “Asylum” and a dead end sign hang near the central contact point for asylum seekers (ZASt) in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on April 8, 2020, in Halberstadt, Eastern Germany.
JENS SCHLÜTER / AFP
Establishment forces are crying wolf ahead of a potential AfD-led government in Saxony-Anhalt.
A German pro-migration NGO, Landesnetzwerk Migrantenorganisationen Sachsen-Anhalt (Lamsa) is openly calling for emergency measures, including relocation programmes for migrants, in the event of an AfD election victory in the Eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Lamsa representatives have warned of a “poisoned climate” and suggest that many foreigners could leave the state if the AfD takes power.
“We call on the other fifteen federal states to set up admission programmes for refugees from Saxony-Anhalt,” the organisation’s chairwoman, Undra Dreßler said.
The hysteria surrounding a potential AfD victory is gaining traction: with less than three months to go before the September 6 state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the right-wing anti-immigration party is polling at 42%, far ahead of the largest governing party, the centre-right CDU, which has dropped to 24%.
The AfD is not only on track to become the strongest party but could potentially secure an outright majority of seats in the state parliament, allowing it to create a government without any coalition partners.
Similar AfD surges are visible all across Germany, with recent polling showing that the party has 29% support nationwide, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU has dropped to an abysmal 20%.
According to AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, “Germany wants a change in politics.”
Die Union fällt auf 20%, unsere AfD hat mit 29% inzwischen 9 Prozentpunkte Vorsprung. Deutschland will den politischen Wandel – wir stehen bereit! pic.twitter.com/KVyR2dIo28
Despite this clear signal by the voters, the political and institutional establishment appears focused less on adapting to electoral reality and more on constructing barriers around a potential AfD-led government.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU, together with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, the liberal FDP, and the far-left Die Linke, pushed through a controversial parliamentary reform to curb the powers of the next government, which will likely be led by the AfD.
As Sabine Beppler-Spahl writes in her commentary for europeanconservative.com:
With this legal package to make their state and its institutions ‘AfD-proof,’ Saxony-Anhalt’s mainstream parties expose their ignorance of—or contempt for—one of the key principles of democracy: that elections define political power; that elected governments have the right, and even the duty, to act on the will of the voters; and that institutions which no longer command public support can, and must, be changed. For them, preserving institutions matters more than respecting democracy and the will of the people.
The AfD will likely take measures reversing pro-migration policies and defunding pro-LGBT programmes—measures the establishment parties are already framing as anti-democratic.
In a recent interview, Reiner Haseloff, Saxony-Anhalt’s former prime minister, put forward that in the event of the AfD taking power, the state could be punished by stripping it of federal and EU funds. He even suggested that “high school diplomas and other qualifications could no longer be automatically accepted by universities elsewhere.”
Zoltán Kottász is a journalist for europeanconservative.com, based in Budapest. He worked for many years as a journalist and as the editor of the foreign desk at the Hungarian daily, Magyar Nemzet. He focuses primarily on European politics.
