Anti-immigration party chooses new leadership
BERLIN — Germany’s nationalist party Alternative for Germany on Sunday elected two new top candidates for the September general election after the party’s bestknown politician, Frauke Petry, withdrew last week.
Members of the farright party, known by its acronym AfD, elected Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel at their convention in Cologne.
Divisions erupted among the factions of the German nationalists as delegates from the AfD rejected an appeal Saturday by Petry to seek a more pragmatic political path. The defeat was a significant blow for AfD co-leader Petry, whose position in the party is now significantly weakened.
Gauland, 76, is one of the party’s most prominent members and one of Petry’s main rivals. “We want to keep our home country, keep our identity, and we are proud to be German,” he said in his acceptance speech.
Weidel, 38, is a consultant who has not stood in the spotlight of the fouryear-old party so far. “If we now stick together and fight together, then finally a true opposition party will be getting into German Parliament,” Weidel told cheering delegates.
The delegates also voted for an election manifesto that is harsh on immigration and Muslims and reiterates calls for leaving the European Union’s euro currency.
The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned the AfD’s further move to the far right, saying the party is trying to make “a chauvinist-nationalist way of thinking socially acceptable in Germany again.”
Joseph Schuster warned that the party is “threatening Jewish and Muslim life in Germany.”
AfD’s poll ratings soared amid the influx of migrants to Germany in late 2015 and early 2016. But they have sagged in recent months as the issue faded from headlines and the party became increasingly mired in infighting.