Dispute in the state parliament: AfD causes outrage with comparison
In the Bavarian state parliament on Wednesday, there was a fierce dispute between the parliamentary groups over the hitherto purely formal question of future committee appointments. The dispute culminated in the AfD accusing the coalition of the CSU and the Free Voters of pushing through a "small enabling act". SPD parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn sharply rejected this to the applause of the entire parliament with the exception of the AfD: "Anyone who makes this comparison shows the intellectual tradition in which they stand," he said. The Nazis had cemented their power in 1933 with the Enabling Act.
The reason for the dispute: an amendment to the rules of procedure, with which the CSU and Free Voters ultimately secured the chairmanship of three important committees in the state parliament - against the AfD. The SPD also voted in favor of changing the procedure for accessing the chair positions: from the Sainte Laguë/Schepers procedure to the d'Hondt procedure.
This means that the CSU and Freie Wähler can now secure access to the first three committee chairs before the AfD, as the third strongest party, gets its first turn. According to the previous procedure, there would have been two - with the result that the AfD, which is also monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Bavaria, would possibly have been given the chair of the Committee on Internal Affairs or the Committee on Legal Affairs. The CSU and Free Voters wanted to avoid this at all costs with their initiative.
While the SPD supported the amendment to the rules of procedure - with the exception of one abstention - the Greens voted against it, as did the AfD. The parliamentary secretary of the Greens, Jürgen Mistol, called the amendment superfluous in order to prevent an AfD committee chairman. "None of us have to elect a chairperson we don't want. Nobody can force us to do so." There is no need for a "twist" in the state parliament's rules of procedure.
The parliamentary director of the AfD, Christoph Maier, accused the CSU and the Free Voters of politically abusing the rules of procedure to expand their own power. He spoke of an attack on parliamentary minority rights and also of a "small enabling act" for the coalition.
In reality, however, only the order of access changes - the number of chair positions per parliamentary group remains the same. The parliamentary secretary of the CSU parliamentary group, Michael Hofmann, called the procedure, which is also used in other countries, fair, legally recognized and constitutionally permissible.
In response to the dispute, the SPD parliamentary group leader, Florian von Brunn, condemned the AfD's comparison of the current situation to the Enabling Act in 1933, highlighting the intellectual implications of such a comparison. The amendment to the rules of procedure in the Bavarian state parliament led to a shift in the order of access to committee chairs, allowing the CSU and Freie Wähler to secure theirs before the AfD, a party under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Bavaria.
Source: www.dpa.com
