2024-04-09 10:43:53
Mario Voigt wants to become Prime Minister of Thuringia. For the CDU candidate, coalitions with the Left or the AfD remain taboo – but he is keeping other options open.
Thuringia’s CDU top candidate Mario Voigt has not categorically ruled out a coalition with the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). In response to a corresponding question, Voigt said on the ZDF program “Markus Lanz” with a view to the Thuringian BSW state chairwoman Katja Wolf: “Everything I hear about migration policy or economic policy (…), I have the impression that there There is more of a sense of reality than on the Left or some parts of the Greens.”
He’s “first looking at what they want programmatically. So I won’t rule it out.” BSW is still a “black box,” said Voigt. A new state parliament will be elected in Thuringia on September 1st.
He excludes the Left and the AfD
In contrast, the 47-year-old reiterated his rejection of coalitions with the AfD or the Left “for various reasons”. “I am not in a coalition with the AfD – clarity there. And I am not in a coalition with the Left – clarity there too,” emphasized Voigt. He is promoting a so-called Germany coalition made up of the CDU, FDP and SPD.
He left open a possible alliance with the Greens. Even if these were not his “first option,” they belonged to the democratic center, he said. He finds “exclusionitis” among Democrats indecent. Thuringia’s FDP leader and former short-term prime minister Thomas Kemmerich had ruled out a coalition with the Greens for the Free Democrats in Thuringia.
Embed
CDU loses in polls
An alliance of the Left, the SPD and the Greens currently governs Thuringia, but it does not have its own majority in parliament and has been overruled by the opposition in the past. Voigt’s CDU has already pushed through laws against the will of the governing coalition by passing them in the state parliament with votes from the AfD.
In surveys, the CDU was recently in second place with values of 20 to 21 percent behind the AfD, which recently lost support and reached values between 29 and 31 percent. According to the latest surveys, forming a government in Thuringia would once again be extremely difficult – both Voigt’s favored so-called Germany coalition and a red-red-green alliance would therefore be far from a majority in parliament.