Governor resigns in German political fuss
BERLIN — A German state governor installed with the help of a far-right party said Saturday that he is resigning, three days after his election shook the country’s politics and stoked new tensions in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.
Thomas Kemmerich’s announcement was made as leaders of Merkel’s governing coalition, meeting in Berlin to discuss the fallout, demanded that he go and the legislature of the eastern state of Thuringia “promptly” choose a successor. They called for that to be followed quickly by a new regional election.
The election of Kemmerich, a pro-business politician, was possible only because the farright Alternative for Germany party supported him in a vote in the state legislature — as did the regional branch of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, against the wishes of its national leadership.
Kemmerich’s acceptance of the far-right votes appalled left-leaning parties and many in his own center-right camp. Merkel called his election “inexcusable.” The politician from the small Free Democrats — a party that is in opposition nationally but it is a traditional ally of Merkel’s party — announced a day after he was elected that he planned to step down, though he left unclear when.
Kemmerich said in a statement Saturday that he was resigning “with immediate effect” and paying back to the state all wages earned as a result of his election. It wasn’t immediately clear when exactly a successor might be elected.
At the time of the announcement, Merkel’s coalition released a statement demanding that he leave and a replacement be elected by state lawmakers. They added that, above and beyond that, “the coalition partners are convinced that for reasons of political legitimacy … new elections are necessary in Thuringia soon.”
Earlier Saturday, Merkel fired a federal official whose departure the Social Democrats had sought over the fiasco, another move toward defusing tensions.
Christian Hirte, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union who was the government’s commissioner for the formerly communist east and a deputy economy minister, tweeted that he resigned after Merkel told him he could no longer do the job. Hirte, a deputy leader of the Christian
Democratic Union’s Thuringia branch who sits in the national parliament, had congratulated Kemmerich on Wednesday on his “election as a candidate of the center,” tweeting that it showed the state had voted out its previous left-wing government, and making no mention of the role of the Alternative for Germany party.
The situation also has prompted new criticism of the leadership of Merkel’s successor as party chairwoman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was unable before and immediately after Kemmerich’s election to force her party’s local branch into line.
Saturday’s coalition statement underlined that “we rule out forming governments and political majorities with votes from [the Alternative for Germany party].”