DThe series of resignations and settlements in the AfD has another episode: The Hessian member of the Bundestag Joana Cotar announced on Monday that she had left the party and its parliamentary group.
Cotar wrote that “too many red lines were crossed. Be it through pandering to regimes like Russia, China or Iran, through opportunism and constant bullying in the fight for posts and mandates, or through the establishment of corrupt networks within the party.
In her letter of resignation, Cotar, who now wants to continue exercising her Bundestag mandate as a non-party and non-affiliated party, also indicates that the programmatic factional fights in the AfD are continuing and have contributed to her decision to leave. She asserts that she “stands for a constructive, liberal-conservative policy based on the Basic Law. For her, these included “the principle of personal responsibility, the recognition of achievements, a lean state, freedom of expression without censorship or surveillance and genuine patriotism”.
Cotar has been a member of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2017. She also held leadership positions in the party, for example as a member of the federal executive board. She was one of the representatives of a more moderate current in the AfD, which was represented by federal chairman Jörg Meuthen for a long time until he resigned as party chairman last spring and left the AfD. As a result, Cotar did not run again for a seat on the party executive.
The two current federal chairmen, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, who now lead the party and parliamentary group together, have claimed since the last party conference that they have largely pacified the internal quarrels in the AfD. However, the attitude of the AfD to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine repeatedly causes discord within the party.
In September, for example, the travel plans of AfD members of the state parliament from North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony-Anhalt caused a stir, who wanted to travel to Russia and the Russian-occupied areas in eastern Ukraine in order to “get away from the critical reporting, especially of the public service broadcasting” to get their own picture of the situation.