Party celebrates Bundestag comeback
Ex-AfDler Witt changes to the Center Party
01/18/2022, 7:26 p.m
After a whopping 65 years, the Center Party, which was founded in the mid-19th century, is returning to the Bundestag. She owes this to Uwe Witt, a member of the Bundestag. He had previously left the AfD. That gives an aftertaste to entering the center.
For the first time since 1957, the Christian-conservative Center Party has had a representative in the Bundestag. Member of the Bundestag Uwe Witt, who left the AfD in December, announced his change of party. He is happy “to be able to make Christian, social and humane politics for the Center Party in the German Bundestag,” said Witt. The member of parliament from Schleswig-Holstein justified his resignation from the AfD by saying that the party did not differentiate itself clearly enough from right-wing extremists.
The Center Party had played an important political role in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic as a representative of political Catholicism. In the Weimar Republic, she provided the Chancellor on several occasions. In the Federal Republic, however, it quickly lost influence because a large part of its base turned to the newly founded CDU.
Most recently, the party entered the Bundestag in the 1953 federal election with 0.8 percent of the votes – at that time there was still no five percent hurdle. In recent decades, it has played no role in state or federal elections.
Is Witt the only one left?
The Center Party welcomed the accession in a statement of the member of parliament. She hopes that he will sharpen her profile and program, explained Secretary General Christian Otte. He pointed out that Witt had given 61 speeches in the Bundestag in the previous legislative period. For the Center Party he is an “excellent figurehead”.
According to information from “Spiegel”, there are also concerned voices from the party. They apparently fear Witt’s accession could influence the political orientation in the medium term. Witt’s joining the party was an “absolute case-by-case decision,” it said. Should membership applications follow from the ranks of the AfD, these would be examined particularly carefully so that the center party would not be ideologically changed.