In the German district of Sonneberg, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has managed to introduce its first politician to head a local government body. Robert Sesselmann has prevailed in the elections to be there provincial president.
Of Robert Sesselmann, a 50-year-old labor lawyer, father of three children with a political career of just four years in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, it is said that has “made history”. He is the first politician of that formation that manages to place himself in charge of a public administration body. He has done so after prevailing on Sunday in the second and decisive vote held in his province, Sonneberg, in the Land from Thuringia (it’s German).
Sesselmann, by virtue of a victory over his Christian Democrat rival Jürgen Köpper, in which he took 52.8% of the vote, has broken with the “political hygiene” measures that they have tried to impose on his party. After the first vote, in which no candidate achieved an absolute majority, the major political groups, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and even the leftists of The leftunsuccessfully supported Köpper.
“We are on the way to being a party of the masses. We can make history next year,” Sesselmann said on his triumphant election night, surrounded by his bosses. Namely, Tino Chrupalla, co-president of the AfD, and Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD in Thuringia and Sesselmann’s boss in the parliament of that federal state.
The AfD is under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the name given in Germany to the intelligence services of the Ministry of the Interior – but the party of Chrupalla, Höcke, Sesselmann and company is in luck, and not only because his triumph at Sonneberg. The party has weeks of demoscopic bonanza.