The German political class reacted with concern to the victory of the far-right AfD party on Sunday in the early elections of Sonneberg, a small district of Thuringia, which will thus become the first territory led by the far-right in Germany. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate, Robert Sesselmann, achieved 52.8% of the votes in a direct election, with which he will become district administrator (Landkreis, as these administrative units are called).
Sonneberg, with 56,000 inhabitants divided into towns and villages, is one of the smallest rural districts in Germany, where there are 294. Apart from that, there are the large cities, which constitute urban districts, of which there are 106. In total, Germany thus has 400 districts.
“The fact that in Sonneberg the AfD candidate was able to win more than half of the votes in the direct election of the district administrator is a gap,” lamented Saskia Esken, co-chair of the Social Democratic SPD, the party of chancellor Olaf. Scholz.
In Thuringia, a land governed by a tripartite coalition led by the leftist Die Linke, with SPD and Greens as partners, the regional president, the leftist Bodo Ramelow, played down the issue, recalling that the position of district administrator is more like of a managing director. “He runs an administration,” Ramelow stressed.
“It is a democratically legitimate election, in which a majority has given its confidence to this candidate, Mr. Sesselmann, who will now lead this district as administrator,” said the president of Thuringia. We are talking about an election for a public administrative position, dependent on the district council, and to that extent Mr. Sesselmann cannot act freely as he wishes.
District administrators perform public tasks, mostly delegated. At Sonneberg, those tasks include: school development planning, ambulance service, transportation, waste management and disposal, tourism, street maintenance, and fire protection.
However, the person in charge of the Interior of Thuringia, the Social Democrat Georg Maier, said that the result of the polls is “an alarm signal for all democratic forces”, so “now it is time to put aside political interests and defend together democracy”.
Robert Sesselmann faced the Christian Democratic candidate Jürgen Köpper in the second round in Sonneberg on Sunday, who held the position on an interim basis until these early elections, which were called after the incumbent – ??an independent elected in 2018 – left due to a serious illness . Despite the fact that the other parties called on the public to vote for Köpper – who received 47.2% – the AfD candidate triumphed in this small district in an eastern land, where the extreme right usually has good results.
In Thuringia, polls give the AfD first place in voting intentions, with around 30%. In this land, the party is dominated by its most extreme current, represented by the regional leader Björn Höck. With Sesselmann, the AfD will be able to administer a territory. Until now, the ultra-right has never been able to do so in any City Council or regional government, due to the sanitary cordon imposed by other parties when forging government coalitions.
