AfD and Linke refuse to elect CDU leader Friedrich Merz as Chancellor on Tuesday.
AfD’s Second Parliamentary Spokesman, Stephan Brandner, told the news portal T-Online that in his opinion, “Herr Merz will not receive a single vote from us.” He cannot imagine that “anyone with a shred of political sense” would elect Merz as Chancellor. “And we have great political sense at the AfD” said Brandner, whose party was upgraded to a “confirmed right-wing extremist tendency” by the Federal Constitutional Protection Agency on Friday.
Christian Görke, the parliamentary spokesman of the Linke, also rejects Merz as Chancellor on behalf of his faction. “We will not elect the Blackrock king as Chancellor” he said to T-Online. Merz worked as the chairman of the supervisory board of Blackrock Asset Management Deutschland, the German branch of the world’s largest asset manager Blackrock, for several years before returning to politics.
However, it is unlikely to be a close race for Merz. He needs the so-called Chancellor majority, which is the absolute majority of the members of the Bundestag, in the first round of voting. This threshold is at 316 votes. CDU, CSU and SPD together have 328 votes in the parliament.