CDU wants Max Otte to leave the party

The AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel did not even try to hide the fact that there is more to the nomination of the CDU man Max Otte for the office of Federal President than just the desire for one’s own candidate. It is “not funny” that the CDU is now thinking about removing Otte from the party, Weidel said on Tuesday when, together with federal spokesman Tino Chrupalla, she presented the party’s candidate for the highest state office. It can be assumed that the AfD leadership was happy to accept the shock waves that then hit the CDU. Otte explained that the candidacy was a “great honor”. He does not see any conflicts due to his CDU membership, the office is “non-partisan”.

The Konrad-Adenauer-Haus didn’t even want to wait for the official presentation of the AfD candidate. Already in the early afternoon, the still incumbent CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak and his successor Mario Czaja declared the economist and head of the Union of Values ​​to be an undesirable person. Anyone who, as a Christian Democrat, even considers being nominated by the AfD for the office of Federal President, “is violating the values ​​of the CDU and has no place in our party,” said Ziemiak. He then asked Otte to leave the party.

Since Otte did not comply with this demand, the CDU decided later in the evening to expel him from the party. According to information from the participants, the decision in the federal executive committee to initiate a corresponding procedure was unanimous. In addition, Otte immediately loses all membership rights.

Czaja referred to the Union’s support for a second term in office for Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Otte violated a decision of the party. The fact that it is about a candidacy for the AfD exacerbates this, he said. The CDU excludes political cooperation with the AfD by incompatibility decision.

Connections to the AfD have existed for a long time

The CDU, meanwhile, has to put up with the question of why it is only now asking economists to leave the party. Because Otte already had plenty of points of contact with the AfD in the past. From June 2018 to January 2021 he was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation. In 2018 he organized the “New Hambach Festival”, to which AfD boss Jörg Meuthen was invited, among others. In 2017, he announced in an interview that he would vote for the AfD in the upcoming federal elections.

Otte has been chairman of the conservative union of values ​​since May last year. The association sees itself as representing the particularly conservative current in the Union, but is not an official party organization. Otte’s relationship to the union of values ​​is also mixed. When he spoke of hate speech against rights after the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke, the Union of Values ​​called on the CDU leadership to examine Otte’s exclusion from the party.

Now his candidacy could lead to a final break with the association. The founding chairman of the Union of Values, Alexander Mitsch, criticized that Otte not only discredited the founding idea of ​​the Union of Values, but unfortunately also the absolutely right demand that the CDU/CSU should nominate their own candidate for Federal President. Other members are also moving away from him. According to his own statements, the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, declared his withdrawal from the Union of Values ​​on Tuesday.

Otte has no chance of winning the election. The Federal Assembly meets on February 13 to elect the Federal President. With the votes from the SPD, Greens, FDP and CDU/CSU, Steinmeier can almost certainly count on re-election. A good two weeks ago, the left had also nominated the Mainz social doctor Gerhard Trabert as another candidate.