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Rottweil town hall: The special party conference could not start as planned

Photo: Christoph Schmidt / dpa

The special party conference of the Southwest AfD could not begin as planned: the AfD leadership had the Rottweil town hall cleared before the party conference began.

Members and guests had to leave the hall; later only members with voting rights were to be allowed back in.

The mood in the room was very heated: board members argued openly about how to proceed, and the various camps booed each other.

The AfD does not hold delegate conferences in the southwest, but rather member party conferences - and it is always completely unclear how many arrive and which camps they belong to.

The hall has around 1,000 seats, and significantly more members and guests arrived on Saturday.

The two-day special party conference at the weekend is based on a letter of protest from 22 of the 37 district associations, which accuse seven board members of blocking the two state chairmen Markus Frohnmaier and Emil Sanzen.

The board was to be re-elected on Saturday.

He is considered deeply divided.

Santen and Frohnmaier say they intend to run again.

But the former state chairman Dirk Spaniel could also make another attempt at the leadership position.

If the personal differences cannot be resolved, he would be “available for a fresh start,” Spaniel told the “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten”.

asc/dpa