Following a chaotic first session of the Thuringian state parliament in eastern Germany after a far-right party got the most votes in a recent election, the Thuringian Constitutional Court is to decide how to proceed.
Chaos broke out on Thursday when the senior legislator of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Jürgen Treutler, refused to grant other parties’ requests to speak, or file motions or debate on procedural rule changes.
The state constitutional court is due to rule on Friday on an urgent application by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) faction, which it says other parties will participate in, to allow other parties to put forward candidates for president of the state parliament.
The session abruptly adjourned amid a standoff over the AfD’s plans to put forward Wiebke Muhsal for the role.
The other parties have dismissed her nomination as a mere provocation, pointing in part to a past conviction for fraud, and she has little chance of commanding a majority given the opposition of all other parties.
But the AfD refused to consider changes to the rules that would allow other parties to put forward competing candidates, instead abruptly adjourning the meeting.
The CDU and newly formed Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) submitted a motion that would allow all parliamentary groups to propose candidates from the outset, but Treutler ignored this, prompting the CDU to accuse him of exceeding his authority
“This was an attack on parliamentary rights, on the constitution and on every single member of parliament,” said Thuringian CDU leader Mario Voigt.
“What you are doing here is a seizure of power,” CDU member Andreas Bühl said.
It is not yet clear how the Constitutional Court will decide. The AfD can also weigh in. But because this is an urgent matter, the judges will deliberate but decide without an oral hearing, a spokesman said when asked. Although the court is cognizant of the time pressure, the state parliament cannot set the time frame for the court, he said.
The constitutional court is not expected to reach a decision until Friday at the earliest. As such, the state parliament session has been postponed until Saturday at 9:30 am (0730 GMT), but it is uncertain if a court decision will have been made by then.
According to the lawyer Maximilian Steinbeis, the AfD, as the strongest faction, only has the right to propose the candidate for the state parliament president’s job – but does not the right to have that candidate also elected.
“That is the free decision of the members of the new Thuringian state parliament as to whom they want to elect as their president. And the constitution doesn’t give the AfD any more rights as the strongest faction,” Steinbeis said on Thursday evening on the public broadcaster ZDF’s evening news show.
Steinbeis is the founder of blog that deals with constitutional questions and on what would happen if “authoritarian populist parties were to gain state power.”
