Berlin – Georg Pazderski, Berlin’s AfD parliamentary group leader in the House of Representatives, is angry, especially at Berlin’s top candidate Kristin Brinker. In his opinion, she shares responsibility for the miserable election results on Sunday. “The result for Berlin is a veritable disaster,” said Pazderski on Monday. In Berlin, his party only got 8 percent. The faction shrank from originally 25 MPs to 13. The AfD will no longer have seven councilors as before, but only four.
“It was a mistake to go into the election campaign in Berlin with a top candidate who was not only without experience in planning and conducting election campaigns, and who remained completely unknown to most Berliners,” said Pazderski. In addition, there were “dubious circumstances in the nomination of the candidate through a fictional financial affair to get internal party opponents out of the way” and “the sisterly relationship” in dealing with the former wing. All of this had a major impact on the election campaign.
The AfD was not clear enough in the election campaign, said the parliamentary group leader. They didn’t show their corners and edges. “Unlike in 2016, there was actually nothing where you could say that the AfD had a clear demand in certain areas.”
Pazderski accused the top candidate of her “close relationship” with the former right-wing extremist wing of the party and with the lateral thinker movement. That scared off many voters. In fact, the AfD lost more than 90,000 votes to other parties. According to the state returning officer, the party won only 145,494 votes in the most recent election.
Criticism of proximity to conspiracy theorists
The parliamentary group leader not only criticized Kristin Brinker, but also his party in general: During the Corona crisis, “some in the party” had come closer to conspiracy theorists. “That was unsuitable to get conservative voters excited about the AfD.”
The former colonel in the Bundeswehr, who is considered moderate, called for his party to be demarcated from the right wing. “The new parliamentary group in Berlin has to decide whether to entrust the party chairman to Kristin Brinker, who lost the election. If she does, she will keep losing weight. Because the conflict-averse course of Ms. Brinker and her badly damaged image will ensure that the AfD parliamentary group hardly takes place in public. “
This time Georg Pazderski wanted to go to the Bundestag himself. However, it failed because only the first three of the Berlin list move in there, but it was in fourth place.
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