Blame after AfD candidate wins mayoral election in Pirna
Lochner is the first AfD candidate to become Lord Mayor in Germany. According to preliminary results, he won the second round of voting on Sunday with 38.54% of the vote against the candidate of the Free Voters, Ralf Thiele, and CDU candidate Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth. Pirna, located south-east of Dresden in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, has 40,000 inhabitants.
Lochner won the first round of voting on November 26, ahead of second-placed Thiele and third-placed Dollinger-Knuth. Candidates from the Left, SPD and Greens who had also entered the race subsequently decided not to run again in the second round in favor of the CDU candidate.
By sticking with its own candidate in the second round of voting, the CDU had "consciously accepted the risk of playing the stirrup holder for the AfD", explained the Saxon state chairman of the Free Voters, Thomas Weidinger, on Monday. The result was predictable. "However, the CDU's drive to retain power was probably too great to back down in favor of a bourgeois candidate like Ralf Thiele."
The Saxon state association of Mehr Demokratie called for a reform of Saxony's electoral law. "There should be a run-off election in which only the two remaining candidates run. Whoever achieves the majority of votes is elected. Other federal states do it better," explained state executive spokesman Frank Rosberger on Monday. The fact that a candidate could become Lord Mayor without an absolute majority is "hardly comprehensible".
With Lochner's election, the AfD now holds two top municipal posts in Germany. In June, AfD politician Robert Sesselmann won a district council post for the party for the first time in the Thuringian district of Sonneberg.
Last week, the Saxon State Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD in the Free State as definitely right-wing extremist. After Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, the Saxon AfD is already the third state association of the party with such a classification. A new state parliament will be elected in Saxony on September 1 next year.
The German Association of Cities reacted with concern to the election results in Pirna on Monday. "This is democracy, but the result is very worrying for us at the German Association of Cities and Towns," explained the municipal umbrella organization. It shows that "a rift is running through our society in many places".
Markus Schirdewan, Federal Chairman of the Left Party, blamed "a policy of ignorance and social coldness" by the traffic light coalition at federal level for the rise of the AfD. Against this backdrop, he feared "more election results like this", Schirdewan said in Berlin on Monday.
The Saxon Greens expressed their horror and self-criticism. The election of Lochner was a "dam break for Saxony", explained co-chair Christin Furtenbacher on Monday Co-chair Marie Müser emphasized that the result in conjunction with a voter turnout of only 53% clearly shows that democratic parties "are currently not reaching too many people".
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Source: www.stern.de
