What has now reached its sad and gruesome climax in Thuringia after a year and a half is a case of almost collective political failure. After the debacle about Thomas Kemmerich, head of the five percent FDP party, presumably elected by votes from the AfD parliamentary group as short-term prime minister, the CDU, Left, Greens and SPD parliamentary groups had actually agreed on a “stability mechanism”. It also provided for the election of the new state parliament on September 26th, simultaneously with the federal election. This promise to the voters, too, is now being broken; the state parliament's self-dissolution with the necessary two-thirds majority is canceled.
In Thuringia, for the first time in a federal state, an unstable minority government will be installed over the full legislative period until 2024, which does not even have a tolerance partner. For fear of a bad result in a new election, four CDU members refused to dissolve parliament. Two MPs from the left followed and the Greens also withdrew, because then the AfD could once again be the majority funder. And Kemmerich's FDP didn't think much of a new election anyway. But the SPD did not participate in this mishmash of conditions, which pulled the knot even tighter. The AfD around its leader Höcke is now smirking as the winner on the right edge of the field.