The founder of the eurosceptic Alternative for Germany party that has been siphoning votes from Angela Merkel's conservatives urged an AfD congress on Saturday to stop making itself look foolish and choose a single leader. Bernd Lucke told 1,700 delegates in the northern port city of Bremen that the two-year-old AfD, Germany's fastest growing party that has soared to 7 percent in national polls, needs to dispense with its tripartite leadership in order to succeed.
"We're not a bowling club or a rabbit breeding society that we can run in our spare time," Lucke said in a speech. "How did the party leadership work these two years? Here's my one-word answer: 'Botched'. We can't continue like this." The other two leaders, Frauke Petry and Konrad Adam, voiced reservations about what they saw as Lucke's grab for control after the AfD scored stunning wins with an anti-foreigner tack in three east German regional elections in late 2014.
Delegates voted by an 80 to 20 percent majority to back Lucke's proposal in a preliminary one-issue vote on Saturday but all changes proposed have to be endorse in a second vote later. Some 3,500 anti-AFD demonstrators held a boisterous rally outside the congress hall, attacking the party for what they say is its flirt with the far right that breaks post-war taboos in a country that with deep sensitivities about its Nazi past.
"Live better without Nazis" read one of the banners. Scores of AfD supporters confronted protesters by singing the German national anthem from a balcony but a proposal for all to go out and sing the anthem, or Deutschlandlied, was not approved. Under a deal reached by the party executive, any move to a single leadership would be taken in stages, switching from three leaders to two leaders in April and then to one in December. Votes on who will ultimately lead the party will be taken later this year.
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