DRESDEN: Germany’s far-right AfD party was hoping for strong gains on Sunday in elections in two ex-communist states, potentially shaking Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fragile coalition government.
Some 5.5 million voters were to cast their ballots in Saxony and Brandenburg states, with first exit poll results expected shortly after 1600 GMT.
The six-year-old anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party has polled strongly in both states, part of its eastern electoral heartland.
Aside from railing against asylum-seekers and Islam, the AfD has capitalised on resentment about a lingering east-west wealth gap since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
“Let’s complete the change”, it has vowed in the campaign, referring to the peaceful revolution that ended the one-party state and the following year brought national reunification.
Voter turnout was reported as high, with many citizens eager to make their vote count in a crucial election.
In Dresden, Karl-Heinz Landgraf, 75, said he considered the AfD to be right-wing extremists and “the problem is simply that the government failed to give a perspective to the people of the east after the fall of communism”.
“I hope that the other parties which defend openness to the world, democracy and environmental protection will prevail,” said another voter, Monika Schneider, 49.
The AfD has long co-opted the former pro-democracy chant “We are the people” and turned it against what it labels the “Merkel regime”.
Eastern Germany is home to several of the AfD’s most extremist leaders, among them Bjoern Hoecke, who has labelled Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame”.
His close ally, former paratrooper Andreas Kalbitz, 46, who has had deep ties to right-wing extremist groups, is the top candidate in Brandenburg.
Der Spiegel weekly has reported that in 2007 Kalbitz joined known German neo-Nazis on a visit to Athens that came to police attention when a swastika flag was flown from a hotel balcony. Kalbitz confirmed to the magazine that he joined the trip but insisted that the event “was not conducive to arousing my further interest or approval”.
In Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, the AfD has been polling neck and neck with the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD), both at just over 20 percent.
In Saxony, the state where the extremist Pegida street movement was born, the AfD has slipped back several points behind Merkel’s centre-right CDU. But even if the AfD emerges as the strongest party in either state, the other major parties are expected to shut it out from governing by forming coalitions to achieve majorities.
The AfD, formed initially as a eurosceptic group, now focuses mainly on fear and anger over Germany’s mass migrant influx since 2015.
Merkel, who also grew up in the east, avoided campaigning on the ground ahead of Sunday’s polls in the region, where she has in the past faced harsh abuse.
For Merkel, an election debacle for either her CDU or junior coalition partner the SPD would pose another threat to their uneasy coalition.
The veteran leader has already pledged to step down when her current term ends in 2021, but regional election upsets could speed up her government’s demise.
Poor results for the SPD, already demoralised by a string of election defeats, would boost internal critics who want the party to leave Merkel’s government quickly. — AFP
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