Reiner Haseloff has suffered many wounds from the Magdeburg Lions' Den.

Now he has one more.

It is not a new experience for him that his election as prime minister is a bit bumpy.

In 2016 he had to go to a second ballot.

At that time, however, the CDU politician relied on a Kenya coalition with the SPD and the Greens, which was a bigger risk than the now negotiated “Germany coalition” with the SPD and FDP.

One would have thought: This time it worked straight away, especially since the coalition negotiations did not have to bridge too great a contradiction.

But Haseloff himself was not entirely sure of his cause. He brought the FDP on board, although this was not mathematically necessary: ​​the parliamentary groups of CDU and SPD would also have a majority in the state parliament in Magdeburg, even if only very thinly. In the textbook of the art of government it says: This has a disciplinary effect, is therefore almost easier to control than a large majority in which deviants feel encouraged. But in Saxony-Anhalt not everything is going according to the textbook after the rise of the AfD.

There are deep rifts in the CDU parliamentary group.

Partly it is about personal, partly about political motives, which mean that Haseloff is anything but unchallenged.

It is true that the parliamentary group owes its size above all to him.

The good result in the state elections on June 6th - the CDU achieved 37.1 percent, significantly more than it was predicted in surveys - depends above all on his person, who was particularly attractive as a guarantor of continuity and stability in the election.

At the time, it was about whether the AfD could become the strongest force and whether that would plunge parliament - see Thuringia - into a serious crisis.

Resistance to the strict anti-AfD course

The resistance to his course is still great. Most recently, they came to light around the turn of the year in the dispute over the fee increase in public broadcasting, in which the CDU parliamentary group sided with the AfD parliamentary group, new elections were brought into play, and the state chairman of the CDU, the then Interior Minister Holger Stahlknecht and possible successor to Haseloff, had to resign - at Haseloff's instigation. That was because he did not want to raise doubts about his demarcation from the AfD.

In addition, a third partner in the government, who is actually not necessary, is taking over government posts that CDU politicians claim for themselves. Both the disagreement in the parliamentary group over the course towards the AfD as well as the daring construction of the coalition remain a mortgage for Haseloff's third and probably last term in office. In the second ballot he was elected with a narrow majority, he was only three votes short of the coalition, not eight as in the first ballot.

That it was enough for him is likely to be due to a lecture in the CDU parliamentary group between the ballots. It will be interesting to find out what role Holger Stahlknecht played in this. He is again a member of the state parliament, so he has not given up yet. It would have been wise if he had stood up for Haseloff. Then the Prime Minister would have something to thank him for again.