Alternative For Germany - A New Party In Germany To Reckon With

Posted: 5/29/2017

Trigger

A fairly new political party is active and quite successful with voters in Germany. The name of this party is Alternative fuer Deutschland (Alternative for Germany). Founded only a few years ago (in 2013) it has already managed to be elected into about a dozen or more parliaments of the 16 states comprising the Federal Republic of Germany. This fairly new party stands a good chance to win more than enough votes in the upcoming general election in September to gain entrance into the German parliament.

Ideology & Policies

Well, I do not claim to be an expert regarding this new party. However, I do follow Facebook postings of this party and major representatives of this party for some time now. Most of their postings are reasonable and common sense approaches to political issues.

Generally speaking, I would recommend this party as being serious about some urgently necessary reforms of democracy in Germany.

This party is widely characterised as a right wing populist party. However, this is the usual left wing spin of German and western media regarding this party. Quite often this party is even attacked in public as brown shirts or Nazi party and so on.

The Election Program

In Germany (as elsewhere, in other western democracies), the contending political parties issue election platforms or programs.

Here is the source: http://www.afd.de/wahlprogramm (in German only)

For sake of brevity, I will present here only a few items from the AfD election program for the general election of 2017 (items, in no particular order, which I think, are overdue reforms):

1. The ever progressing centralisation of the EU should be reversed to form a confederation of states
2. Term limits for politicians. E.g. like in the U.S., the chancellor should be limited to two terms in office. Elected representatives in parliament to four terms.
3. Direct election of the largely ceremonial, but important German president
4. Political parties in Germany have way too much control over who becomes a candidate for office. AfD wishes to have more free candidates to challenge incumbents etc.
5. Waste of taxpayers’ money should be a crime punishable under law (an interesting proposal)
6. Abolishment of lavish retirement benefits of elected representatives
7. Measures against corruption and lobbying of elected representatives
8. Abolishment of female quotas for politicians or businesses (how German politicians ever voted for such socialist nonsense is still beyond my comprehension)
9. Reestablishment of freedom of contract! E.g. abolishment of so called anti discrimination laws! Something, politicians in the U.S. could learn from.
10. Against the irresponsible and reckless long term European monetary policy of zero or negative interest rates and extreme buying of government and business bonds. AfD calls this the expropriation of older folks and people, who save their money
11. Germany first foreign policy
12. Demanding tax cuts in way overtaxed Germany. The value added tax should be lowered by 7 percentage points from currently 19%. Why Germans have put up with such a high, confiscatory sales tax for decades is beyond comprehension. Introduction of price adjustments into the tax code to prevent cold or hidden taxation

General Election 2017

According to recent polls it appears that this party will enter the German parliament in Berlin with around 8% of all votes cast. I would not be surprised if the results come in a few percentage points higher for this party.

If the Christian Democratic party (CDU/CSU) and the liberal party (FDP) remain clearly under 50% as a likely outcome of the election and form a coalition government, the AfD will probably gain significant influence on German politics.

There is a general, palpable, and substantial undercurrent of deep dissatisfaction of people in Germany with the way things are going and the at times chaotic, mismanagement of chancellor Merkel is long overdue to end.

  

A Caveat

This new, young party is already involved in some very serious, destructive, quite unnecessary, inner party strife. This has been exploited extensively by the left wing media on a daily basis.