Germany is still no country for old AfD men, especially not in the Bundestag.
Or so it seems when one looks at the events unfolding in the Berlin legislature regarding the position of the parliament’s Alterspräsident (president by right of age), a largely symbolic title that gives the holder the right to make the first speech of the new legislative session.
The oldest member of the federal parliament is AfD MP Alexander Gauland (84), who traditionally would be the one to open the newly elected Bundestag when it first convenes on March 25.
However, this will not be the case. The honour will instead be given to far-left Die Linke MP Gregor Gysi, aged 77, who was the leader of the ruling German Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the Communist German Democratic Republic, an effective one-party system.
The issue is not just that AfD has again been snubbed by the parliamentary consensus of the so-called centre-right, the liberals and the Left. This has been the official practice since AfD first entered parliament in 2017. At that time, Wilhelm von Gottberg was the oldest member, but the parliamentary majority changed the rules. Since then, Instead of using age—traditionally the criterion since 1949—the ranking member is now determined by length of service in the Bundestag..
As if this in itself were not sufficiently cringe, the person of Gysi is a major embarrassment, as Junge Freiheit reminds us. There is evidence that Gysi used to work for the feared and loathed East German secret police, the Stasi, as an “unofficial collaborator,” according to Stasi archival documents.
Despite his prominent political role in the GDR, Gysi seamlessly converted himself to a dedicated democrat after the system changed. He entered the Bundestag in 1990 for the SED-PDS (Socialist Unity Party and Die Linkespartei) coalition. In 2002, he resigned his seat to become Berlin’s Senator for Economic Affairs under Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD). However, he resigned from that position shortly afterwards and obtained a seat in the Bundestag as the leading candidate of Die Linke in 2005, where he has been a member ever since.
As Junge Freiheit highlights, while the CDU/CSU has raised no objections to Gysi presiding over the first Bundestag session next week, the AfD is pondering a protest. According to reports, AfD is considering various ways to express their dissatisfaction next Tuesday.
This is the second time in the history of reunified Germany that a former member of the SED (now part of Die Linke) has become the oldest member of the Bundestag. But back in 2004 the CDU/CSU protested strongly against 81-year-old Stefan Heym, who was running on the PDS list only so that the party could nominate the German parliament’s Alterspräsident.
Despite the criticism, 21 years ago no one thought of changing the rules of procedure for this reason. The CDU/CSU representatives remained seated after Heym’s speech and remained silent, “which at the time was considered an unheard-of breach of the unwritten rules of parliament”, Junge Freiheit recalled, adding: “We’ll find out on Tuesday whether they’ll give Gysi a standing ovation this time.”
We’ll be watching.
