Responding to a legal complaint by the Christian Democrats (CDU) filed on Thursday, the Thuringian Constitutional Court in a rash ruling has now issued a temporary injunction instructing the senior president of the Thuringian state parliament not to resist motions by the CDU and BSW to change voting rules, as he did in a turbulent session on Thursday, but to let the parliament vote on them. The main intent of the two motions was to prevent the election of an AfD member to the post of parliament president, with the first step being to prevent the senior president—that is, the parliament member oldest of age, who in this case is a member of the AfD—from making the first proposal for a candidate to be the president of the parliament.
With the stated support by the Constitutional Court, the changed procedure was imposed, and CDU member Thadaeus Koenig was voted in as new parliament president. This whole situation was unnecessary, because the same outcome would have occurred had the other parties let the senior president go through the traditional procedure: the AfD would have presented its candidate, who would have been be rejected by the anti-AfD majority of the parliament, followed by the election of a non-AfD candidate to the president’s post. But apparently, the anti-AfD opposition, consisting of CDU, BSW, SPD and Linke, was not sure a candidate of theirs would be voted in.
