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Frankfurt (Oder) (dpa / bb) - The Brandenburg AfD is entering the federal election campaign with its honorary chairman Alexander Gauland.
The AfD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag was elected to number 1 on the AfD state list at the state party conference in Frankfurt (Oder) on Saturday.
The 80-year-old received 192 of the 290 valid votes of the party members.
Members of the Bundestag René Springer and Steffen Kotré came in second and third.
Gauland had proposed the two for re-election.
In his application speech, the 80-year-old had stated that despite his old age he wanted to contribute his experience to help the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag continue to achieve stability, which is still at risk.
"But we managed to ensure that the divisions that existed and existed in the party did not have an impact on the parliamentary group," he emphasized.
Gauland again criticized the co-federal chairman Jörg Meuthen for his speech at the federal party conference at the end of November in Kalkar, Lower Rhine.
"I didn't think our party chairman's speech was the right way - and I'm sticking to it," emphasized Gauland.
In Kalkar, Meuthen had warned against the aggressive demeanor and uninhibited language of party members, as well as against making unreservedly common with the "lateral thinkers" movement.
Meuthen had also criticized Gauland's choice of words in the Bundestag and declared that there was no “Corona dictatorship” in Germany.
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In his application speech at the state party congress, Kotré warned of "foreign infiltration" and, like Springer, called for the consistent deportation of rejected asylum seekers.
Norbert Kleinwächter, member of the Bundestag, accused the federal government of using the corona pandemic to undermine citizens' rights to freedom.
"Mask requirement, quarantine requirement, maybe soon also compulsory vaccination?", Listed Kleinwächter.
A total of 12 places are to be filled on the state list.
A runoff election was necessary because none of the remaining 25 candidates had achieved the required simple majority in the first ballot.
In the runoff election in the evening, 13 candidates competed for the remaining 9 places.
Among them is Kleinwächter, who ended up in fourth place with 136 votes in the first ballot.
500 participants were admitted to the meeting in the Brandenburg Hall, subject to strict hygiene requirements.
In the hall, some participants did not wear the prescribed mouth and nose protection, as was shown in the live stream.
Some participants stood close together.
The leader of the meeting repeatedly called on those present to refrain from forming small groups.
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The city of Frankfurt (Oder) had warned of a health risk in view of the many people in a hall and called on citizens to avoid the area around the hall.
Farther away from the meeting place, around a hundred people demonstrated against the AfD at the beginning of the state party conference.
Two days until Sunday evening were scheduled for the state party conference.
In the 2017 federal election, five AfD MPs from Brandenburg were drawn into the Bundestag via the state list.
In the election, the AfD had 12.6 percent of the second vote.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210320-99-905013 / 3
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AfD Brandenburg on direct candidates for the federal election in 2021
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