Claudia Wittig, the BSW’s top candidate for Saxony-Anhalt, stated that while she could conceptually support the AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, becoming Minister-President, it would be an indirect outcome. She strongly affirmed that the incumbent CDU Minister-President, Sven Schulze, would never receive the BSW’s vote. Wittig explained that if a abstention by the BSW in a third round of voting led to a simple majority and thus propelled Siegmund into office, that is what would happen, even if it was not the BSW’s ideal resolution.
Speaking to the news outlet “Welt” on Monday, Wittig stressed that the situation might necessitate such an outcome. “If those are the majority dynamics, then it might have to happen, because we will definitely not elect Sven Schulze as Minister-President,” she said. “From the beginning, we said that. We still hope that before the third round of voting we can sit down at the table and find an alternative, a more democratic solution that specifically dissolves this polarization. But since we won’t vote for Sven Schulze, it is quite possible that our abstention is precisely what leads to the situation you described.”
However, Wittig maintained that her preference remains to elect an impartial, cross-party Minister-President. She believes the polarization in the state could best be resolved by this approach. “Our goal is indeed to lift this social divide that is clearly emerging in these polls,” she stated. “It is very clear: Sven Schulze does not have a majority and he is being heavily penalized as Minister-President here. But we do not want to play one side against the other; our goal is to sit down together at the table and elect a cross-party Minister-President who must seek changing majorities and who can do politics on substantive issues, rather than being trapped in entrenched blocs.”
