Vote on the vice of the Bundestag: rejected

AfD MP Mariana Harder-Kühnel failed in the election of the vice-president of the Bundestag. Who is the woman against whom the deputies have such reservations?

By Birgit Schmeitzner, ARD-Hauptstadtstudio

Mariana Harder-Kühnel knows the point of view of the parliamentary plenum. The 44-year-old AfD politician is secretary of the Bundestag and regularly sits on the high seats of the board of directors, in addition to the Bundestag's chairman, Wolfgang Schäuble, or a vice-president. Thus, she has experience with the session service, said Harder-Kühnel recently, presenting herself as AFD's candidate for the post of vice president of the Bundestag. "I know how it works and that I can do it."

But in the first round of voting, she failed. It got 223 votes, 355 yes votes would have been necessary. Harder-Kühnel said she was confident that she would eventually be elected. They have at least two other ballots in front of them and offer other groups to talk in direct conversation, reservations.

Second round in December

The candidate for AFD stressed that she had no reservations about it. However, reluctance has been expressed regarding the selection of a member of the AFD group.

According to the leader of the parliamentary group Alexander Gauland, the second round of voting will take place in the week of the December meeting and, if necessary, a third attempt will take place in January.

Good luck, all things

Harder-Kühnel did indeed have a good chance of obtaining the necessary majority. Each parliamentary group of the Bundestag has a position of Vice President, but it needs a majority. The first AfD candidate, Albrecht Glaser, had run in the elections three times and had failed.

The reason was Glaser's commentary on Islam: a religion that does not grant freedom of religion can not claim to itself. Harder-Kühnel, a lawyer, says things differently. He makes the distinction between political Islam and believers entitled to freedom of religion. Glaser had "perhaps too little differentiation" at this stage – a clbadification that presents the AfD politician as a moderate as Glaser.

"I speak with everyone"

This corresponds to the way Harder-Kühnel is located in the AfD. She points out that she does not belong to the "alternative third party" or the "wing". She does not want to be counted among the moderates or in the party's ethnic group.

"I speak with everyone," says Hessin, a party member since the start of the AfD in 2013. For cooperation with other factions, she brings a willingness to compromise, "but not too far away." Harder-Kühnel is the mother of three children, spokesperson for her family policy group and substitute member of the internal committee.

In her speeches in the Bundestag, she remains generally calm and conservative. He accuses the state of interfering too much in "parenting rights of parents" and does not adequately protect marriage and the family as "state-sponsored institution" and do not attack the causes of infertility.

"Non-natural early badualization"

Harder-Kühnel opposes the removal of paragraph 219a StGB, the ban on advertising for abortions. She speaks of "unnatural early badualization imposed by the state" in daycares and schools. Asked about the low proportion of women in her party (only 10 out of 92 deputies are women), Harder-Kühnel replies that this is probably also due to the "strong external hostility" – women probably do not have as much tendency to jump into such a breach. ,

The AfD is "not an ancestral party", as evidenced by the fact that Alice Weidel is at the top of the group. A quota of women refuses Harder Kühnel. In their eyes, such a rate is "bad, anti-performance and constitutionally impracticable". She certainly did not want to be a quota woman.

For the secret ballot on the candidate for the AfD, there had been no recommendation from the fractional leaders. Carsten Schneider, the parliamentary director of the SPD, said in advance that everyone should make his decision. Many colleagues do not wish to be represented by Harder-Kühnel. As a reason, Schneider spoke of the demonstration in Chemnitz, in which the main representatives of AFD with right-wing extremists took to the streets.

The fact that a candidate is not elected to the Bundestag is not new. The left had already experienced it 13 years ago, when its president, Lothar Bisky, had been elected several times and had failed. Six months later, the party joined a new candidate, the vice-president of the group, Petra Pau. She was elected and also confirmed her term in the following legislatures.