The right-wing Vice-Mayor of a town in north-western Germany is facing removal from the post only two weeks after she was elected to the office.
Yesterday the city council of Bad Salzuflen, a town of 50,000 in the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia, announced it would hold a vote on November 19 to remove Sabine Reinknecht as Vice-Mayor.
Reinknecht is a politician with the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which all other major German parties have decided to ostracise.
All factions of the 70-seat city council except AfD itself came out in favour of the deposition vote.
In a joint press statement, the Bad Salzuflen Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens, Liberals and other parties said: “Our common goal is to support democratic institutions, create stable conditions for political work and secure the reputation of our city in the long term.”
According to the city charter, a recall can happen with a two-thirds majority without any specific reason.
The 66-year-old Reinknecht had only been elected to the office on November 5 after she received 16 votes in a secret ballot despite her party only holding 13 seats on the council.
Originally, it had been agreed to install three Vice-Mayors from the CDU, SPD and the Greens. At the ballot, though, Reinknecht won the place originally “reserved” for the Greens candidate.
German media have labelled the ballot’s result a surprising mishap given the antipathy towards AfD from all other parties. It was not clear which council members defected from their party lines. Bad Salzuflen’s Mayor Dirk Tolkemitt said he was shocked after the vote.
At the time, Reinknecht said: “I was very surprised but I was happy. We as a party did not expect this but we see it as a result of our work in the town.”
Since publication, Brussels Signal received this statement from AfD Bad Salzuflen, saying they were “deeply shocked” to hear of the motion to dismiss Reinknechkt: “Instead of respecting a democratic vote, several factions are attempting to politically reverse the election result. In doing so, they are ignoring not only the democratic decision, but also the voters who gave the AfD around 20 per cent of the vote in the local elections. Anyone who wants to vote Sabine Reinknecht out of office is depriving one in five Bad Salzuflen residents of their legitimate representative in the town hall. We see this action as a clear breach of democratic fairness and parliamentary culture”.
An AfD spokesperson added: “For us, one thing remains clear: democratic decisions deserve respect – even when they are politically inconvenient. Anyone who wants to vote until they get the result they want has failed to understand democracy.”
