The parliamentary group in the Erfurt state parliament shrinks from 15 to 12 members. The lawmakers Stefan Wogawa, Dirk Hoffmeister, and Roberto Kobelt have left both the party and the parliamentary group but intend to keep their seats. According to Dirk Hoffmeister, they have founded a new party named “Deine Stimme zählt” (Your Voice Counts).
Wogawa, previously the BSW group’s parliamentary manager, cited ongoing conflicts with the federal party as the reason for the step. He said he recently had to expend much energy “warding off destructive attacks from the BSW federal leadership.” The party leadership had placed the Thuringian lawmakers under general suspicion and, for “transparent election campaign maneuvers in another federal state,” jeopardized “political stability in Thuringia.”
The coalition of CDU, BSW, and SPD had already lacked a majority in the state parliament and relied on votes from the Left. With the departures, the previous deadlock government now becomes a genuine minority government that could theoretically be outvoted by the opposition. The three lawmakers aim to form a parliamentary group, which under Thuringian law would have fewer rights than a parliamentary group but more options than individual lawmakers.
AfD parliamentary group leader Björn Höcke, meanwhile, announced a motion for new elections. “Things cannot go on like this,” he said at the state press conference. The AfD has enough seats in the state parliament to introduce such a motion on its own.
Source: www.n-tv.de
