AfD nominates Alice Weidel as chancellor candidate

AfD ka emëruar politikanen e saj kryesore si kandidate për kancelare. Weidel është një politikane që i pëlqen të provokojë dhe jeton ndryshe.

2024-10-09 12:18:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

AfD nominates Alice Weidel as chancellor candidate

Alice Weidel, AfD candidate for chancellor

She belongs to a very small minority: Alice Weidel is one of nine women in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) parliamentary group. The rest: 69 men. Percentage of women: 11.5 percent. Nowhere else is the rate of women in a parliamentary group so low. It ranges between 25.4 percent (CDU/CSU) to 59.3 percent (Greens).

Politically, Weidel is a hard hitter within the male-dominated AfD: with Tino Chrupalla, she shares the leadership of the party and the parliamentary group. From AfD's perspective, the result in the last election was disappointing: 10.3 percent compared to 12.6 percent in 2017.

Alice Weidel with members of her party

Record results in the elections of the eastern states

But since then this party knows almost only one direction: the rise. In state elections, the AfD recently scored between 18.4 percent (Hesse) and 32.8 percent (Thuringia). In Germany's federal level polls, the AfD party, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) classifies as a suspected right-wing extremist case, reaches values ??of around 20 percent.

Success at all political levels has now led the AfD to nominate another candidate for German chancellor for the federal elections expected to be held in September 2025: Alice Weidel. The 45-year-old will be officially chosen as a candidate at the party's congress in March. However, the doctorate economist has no chance to become the prime minister of Germany. Even if the AfD wins the most votes, this party will not find any partner to form a coalition with it.

Model AfD candidate: Margaret Thatcher

Alice Weidel can only dream of following in the footsteps of her role model: Margaret Thatcher. "I am impressed by her biography, a woman who swims against the currents, even when they are uncomfortable," the AfD leader said in an interview with Bild newspaper about the British prime minister, who was in office from 1979 to in 1990.

Thatcher's nickname was the "Iron Lady" because she stayed true to her course despite opposition. Its motto is: low taxes, less state subsidies, privatization. A course that corresponds to the ideas of Weidel's advisers. "Thatcher took Britain when the country was in economic decline and got it back on track."

Timo Chrupalla and Alice Weidel

"We are trying to reform the EU"

When Weidel joined the AfD, which had been founded a few months earlier in 2013, the program was a eurosceptic and national liberal party. From her point of view, nothing has changed even today: "We are trying to reform the EU," she told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in August. If a reform of the European Union fails, then each country should be given the opportunity to vote in a referendum on whether to remain in the EU.

In the same interview, Weidel wants nothing to do with accusations that he is moving too far to the right. She even defends the most worthy representative of the right wing in the party, Björn Höcke. The leader of the AfD in Thuringia was convicted several times for the public use of Nazi slogans. However, Weidel asserts: "The very provocative element has weakened in him. He is doing excellent work in Thuringia. I find the criminal trials against him ridiculous and suspicious."

Weidel once wanted to expel Björn Höcke from the AfD

This is what the AfD leader says about a man who, according to a court decision, can be called a "fascist". Moreover: The AfD party accused him of having a "resemblance to National Socialism" in 2017. This is why the party wanted to expel her with Weidel's consent. But this request failed. In 2018, she openly spoke against refugees and asylum seekers as "men with knives in their hands." referred to them as "girls with headscarves". For this, she was publicly reprimanded by the then speaker of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Alice Weidel and Björn Höcke

AfD leader justifies the term "girl with a headscarf"

"Polarization is a stylistic tool to start debates", she justified her words a few days later in an interview for "Neue Zürcher Zeitung". With the term "headscarf girl" she wanted to draw attention to the fact that Germany has a problem with conservative Islam, which, according to her, is incompatible with the Constitution.

Alice Weidel, provocateur? Could someone be prejudiced within the AfD also because of her private life? She is in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman and has two adopted children, which is far from the AfD ideal. The party program commits to the traditional family as a guiding principle: "In the family, mother and father take continuous and shared responsibility for their children."

AfD's future chancellor candidate, who lives in Germany and Switzerland, in no way embodies her party's worldview. No problem for Alice Weidel, as she said in 2017: "It may happen that some people have resentment, but this also exists in other parties"./ DW