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The vote this September 6th is a break for Germany, and will have an impact on Berlin. Alternative fuer Deutschland triumphs in Saxony-Anhalt, driven by a record turnout for the small eastern Land, while the CDU sinks. And it’s time for Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old who dreamed of governing in a single-party government, with a far-right program that is also popular among young people. The AfD rising star, with his gentle manners and rampant smile, has shocked the country with radical promises, winning over its people, and the result is 44.2% of the votes, according to evening projections. It is not the absolute majority and therefore he immediately declared: “I don’t know yet if I will be minister president, but we have already written history.” Whether he can form an executive will depend on who lends his hand. And the red-brown Sahra Wagenknecht, with her BSW, whose fate is on the line, would be ready to do so.
In Magdeburg, at the Maritim Hotel, discouragement envelops the electoral party of the Christian Democrats, which has fallen to 18%, half of the preferences of the last time. And the words of the outgoing governor Sven Schulze open the conflict in the CDU: “They are the strongest party. We must face the situation. This is democracy, people went to vote en masse, like never before.” Tones that make it clear what is happening in Friedrich Merz’s party, where the strength of the sanitary cordon that isolates the ultra-right is wavering. And the hard-fisted Kanzler who wanted to halve Afd is now at risk. From the capital, the governing parties Greens and Linke are locking down the so-called Brandmauer, the cordon sanitaire, “no collaboration with a far-right party”. In the next few hours, however, we will have to keep an eye on another important if not decisive result: that of Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW, which has already reached out to Siegmund in the heat of the moment aid to Ukraine, such as Afd which is on a pro-Russian position, will act as a balancing act in the complex match for the first possible populist government, and this in the region where the secret services classify them as “certainly right-wing extremists”.
Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla can hardly contain their euphoria. “It is a historic, sensational result”, said the federal co-president of Alternativa, stating that she could imagine “a collaboration with the CDU or with parts of the CDU”. To the reply on the firmness that transpires from the capital, she bristled: “The disastrous result of the CDU is due to Brandmuer. The people no longer have faith in the party. If Merz continues like this they will never govern anywhere at a federal level again”. Instead it was the Social Democratic vice-chancellor, Lars Klingbeil, who was the first to state that the vote “is a signal for Berlin”. And that this will be listened to, changing the course of the federal government’s policy. His Social Democrats took 9%, a smaller disaster than expected.
Dismay, fear but also anger mark the comments of a vote that marks a “caesus in the history of the country”, according to the parliamentary group leader of the CDU Thorsten Frei. And the anger first strikes the chancellor, who is at risk at this point. “I want to tell people not to be afraid, you are not alone!” – exclaimed the national leader of Linke, Heidi Reichinnek, who is third in the Land with 9%. But the ball is in the Union’s court – Friedrich Merz had said he would halve Afd. And he failed. It was not a good strategy to mistreat the Germans, insulting them as idlers.” “The reform package is finished”, they add from the party which should lend a hand to the Christian Democrats, even if a four-party coalition would now be needed to avoid an AfD executive in Saxony-Anhalt. And between parties with very different souls. «Merz would have done better to stay on holiday», added Franziska Brandt of the Greens, with another jab at Kanzler, who is silent for now. Tensions in Germany remain high: on September 20th there will be elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Meanwhile, if Siegmund were to come to govern he would have to start implementing his program: stop compulsory schooling, separate classes for children with disabilities and migrants, cut funding for the public radio and television service and funding for churches. Everything against which fifteen thousand people rebelled in Piazza Duomo yesterday, in vain.