Life imitates art as populists collapse Thuringia parliament

The back wall of Berlin’s federal press club is perhaps the most familiar in Germany, its blue expanse visible in press conferences with German chancellors and government ministers.
On Friday the blue wall was backdrop to an uneasy new “what-if” play, Der Volksbürger or citizen of the people. The play stages a series of fictional press conferences over a year with a populist German state governor, played by television and theatre actor Fabian Hinrichs.
“It shows how it can come to a constitutional or state crisis if someone doesn’t play by the rules,” said Hinrichs, “if someone is only interested in implementing their own catalogue of values, with the backing of the people who voted for him.”
In the play, the populist governor sparks a constitutional crisis and the first-ever activation of article 37 of Germany’s postwar constitution. This allows the federal government in Berlin to “compel” a federal state to “comply with its obligations”.
The play was devised by Berlin-based lawyer and activist Max Steinbeis and draws on a 2019 essay by him that showed how to stage a populist takeover in Germany.
Its premiere on Friday couldn’t be more timely. Austria’s populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) is on course to win Sunday’s national elections, a political first.
Last Thursday, meanwhile, the populist, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) collapsed the inaugural sitting of the state parliament in the eastern state of Thuringia.
The party took 31.8 per cent of the vote to finish first in September 1st′s state election. In Thursday’s inaugural sitting, the AfD invoked a rule that gives it, as the largest parliamentary party, first refusal to nominate a parliamentary president.
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Anticipating an AfD victory and this very scenario, other parties in the previous parliament sought to change this rule but were blocked by the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Belated efforts by the CDU to change the rule on Thursday were blocked by the AfD.
Soon the sitting descended into chaos, with the CDU and AfD accusing the other of bending parliamentary rules and disregarding democratic norms
Amid angry CDU shouts of an AfD “power grab”, the sitting was postponed until Saturday and legal advice sought from the state constitutional court.
For lawyer and playwright Steinbeis, Thursday’s uproar was entirely predictable. The AfD exploited the weaknesses in parliamentary procedure that he and other legal experts flagged in a 36-page paper they presented to Thuringia’s state parliament last April.
Ahead of his play’s premiere on Friday, Steinbeis suggested the AfD had co-opted the state parliament in Thuringia for a populist “spectacle” of its own.
“It was typical performance for an authoritarian party, claiming it is legitimised by the will of the people to rule even though it only has a minority,” he said. “What we predicted would happen has happened, a populist and authoritarian party is acting ruthlessly to make a fool of parliament.”
The parliamentary uncertainty has complicated efforts by Thuringia’s CDU, which finished second on September 1st, to form a new government. On Friday, the CDU state leader Mario Voigt insisted his party was not to blame for the chaos in Thuringia.
On national radio he conceded his party blocked a binding initiative, brought by the Green Party and based on the Steinbeis paper, to tighten parliamentary procedures. But he insisted all parties in the last parliament had backed a non-binding motion to the same effect.
“The rules were clear,” he said, “it is the AfD that changed them after the election.”
On Friday, leading politicians in Thuringia renewed their calls to ban the Thuringian AfD.
“The AfD is fighting aggressively against parliamentary order,” said Georg Maier, acting state interior minister. “I think the conditions are met for prohibition proceedings.”
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