Coalition with the BSW
Dietmar Woidke was elected in the second round
Updated on December 11, 2024Reading time: 2 min.
Dietmar Woidke achieved the required majority in the second round of the election for Prime Minister of Brandenburg. In the first round he only received 43 votes.
With the votes of the SPD and the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), the incumbent Prime Minister of Brandenburg, Dietmar Woidke, was re-elected in the second round of voting in the Potsdam state parliament. In the vote on Wednesday, the SPD state leader received 50 of the total 88 mandates.
Woidke is the first Prime Minister to be appointed to office by the BSW. In the state parliament, the SPD and BSW factions have 46 mandates. The 63-year-old Woidke has been Prime Minister since 2013. In the first round of voting he missed re-election with 43 votes.
Woidke and his future coalition partner, the state and parliamentary group leader of the BSW, Robert Crumbach, signed the coalition agreement on Tuesday. It forms the basis for the coalition’s political work over the next five years.
The SPD has led the state governments in Potsdam since 1990. Woidke, who has been Prime Minister since 2013, most recently ruled at the head of an alliance of the SPD, CDU and Greens. But the government collapsed a few weeks ago after the dismissal of a Green Party minister.
After the election on September 22nd, in which the Social Democrats came in first after catching up, the new SPD-BSW alliance was the only option because both parties had ruled out working with the AfD.
The SPD and BSW want to preserve the hospital locations, leave kindergartens free of charge for parents, increase the number of police officers and curb illegal migration. The new partners at the federal government and the EU want to work to promote a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict.
In the new state parliament in Potsdam, the SPD is represented by 32 members, the BSW has 14 members, the AfD has 30 seats, and the CDU has 12 members.
The election of the new head of government is also on the agenda in Thuringia on Thursday. The CDU politician Mario Voigt then wants to be elected as Bodo Ramelow’s successor with votes from the CDU, SPD and BSW. Unlike the SPD/BSW alliance in Brandenburg with 44 out of 88 MPs, the so-called blackberry coalition in Erfurt does not have its own majority.