AfD-Chef Jörg Meuthen looks in the internal party power struggle for the expulsion of the Brandenburg state party leaders, Andreas Kalbitz a majority. “I’m trying – and with me the majority of the national Executive Committee of the party to keep together,” he said on Saturday prior to the start of a non-public Federal Convention of his party in the Saxon town of Lommatzsch. A “clear firewall” to the far right and right-wing extremism belong. The actual splitters were sitting elsewhere, stressed Meuthen.
On Friday Meuthen had a legal defeat suffered: The regional court of Berlin had declared the abolition of Kalbitz’ membership by the national Executive Board to be inadmissible. Thus, the right of national politicians may exercise its rights as a party member and as a member of the Federal Board, up to the decision by the AfD Federal arbitration court again. Meuthen showed up on Saturday confident that the arbitrator will know the member rights.
He said that the exclusion of Kalbitz was “uncomfortable action” that one had to take but I have. “We have evidence that Kalbitz has solidified right-wing past that he has never distanced”. Kalbitz was one of the leaders of the right-national “wing” of the Thuringian AfD country – and the group chairmen Björn Höcke.
The Federal Convention, to be assembled on Saturday, around 70 delegates and several members of the Federal Executive, was not expected Kalbitz. In addition to party finances, it should go to the evening also the work of the Federal Executive Committee and the personnel Kalbitz. A request, for example, before throwing Meuthen, to split the party, and to decompose and calls for human consequences. “Because some people do not want nachtreten, because you are with the course, I agree”, so Meuthen. It was, however, a minority.
criticism of Gauland and Höcke
The AfD-honorary Chairman and parliamentary faction leader Alexander Gauland said the “mirror” is concerned: Since then, Meuthen had acted against Kalbitz, watch it “with care as a rule, the rights of a decomposition of trends in the party”. Also of Thuringia, the AfD-Chef Björn Höcke criticized Meuthen: “For the third Time in our very young party’s history, so one of our Federal speaker wants to make parts of the party silenced, or even from the party to urge,” wrote Höcke on Friday night to Facebook and played with it on the predecessor Meuthens, Frauke Petry and Bernd Lucke. Meuthen hinder and destroy the work of the party. Also Co-Chairman of the party, Tino Chrupalla had voted against a withdrawal from Kalbitz membership.
Meuthen acknowledged different views in the Federal Executive. “We are a party to the pluralism of Opinion”. Even if the personnel Kalbitz a “Disagree” would like most of the decisions of the national Executive Committee but, as before, unanimously. “Even now, in this critical Phase.”
