Munich (dpa / lby) - The AfD failed in its attempt to have its member of parliament Oskar Atzinger elected as the new chairman of the education committee in the state parliament. The post, which according to previous parliamentary practices actually belonged to the AfD, had been vacant since former AfD MP Markus Bayerbach was voted out as chairman of the committee.
According to a state parliament spokeswoman, Atzinger only had two votes on Thursday - the AfD has two seats on the committee. 13 MPs voted no, with one abstention. After the state elections in 2018, the fact that the AfD was actually entitled to the presidency was the result of the division between the parliamentary groups at the time.
Tobias Gotthardt (free voters) continues to chair the meetings of the education committee as deputy chairman. "Proposing Oskar Atzinger as the new chairman of the education committee is the democratic right of the AfD. Rejecting him by a majority is the democratic right of the education committee," Gotthardt said on Thursday. The committee "made use of this with a clear majority". He himself is looking forward to continuing his work as "acting chairman of the education committee".
On behalf of his parliamentary group, Oskar Atzinger protested sharply against his non-election: it was a "scandal" that the other parties opposed democratic usage in the state parliament and preferred to leave an important chair vacant for ideological reasons. "A large part of the Bavarian citizens represented by the AfD is undemocratically excluded as a result," he complained.
The former committee chairman Bayerbach, who has since left the AfD, was dismissed in a process that was unprecedented in the history of the Bavarian state parliament at the beginning of 2022. He had been accused of telling the truth in a debate about an internal AfD chat with sometimes radical content.
