Hans Luth, 42, a candidate of the anti-immigrant far-right party, was elected full-time mayor of Rägen-Lesnitz, a small town of about 9,000 inhabitants located in the Saxony-Anhalt region in the east of the country..
The election results, which were published by the municipality on its Facebook page, showed that Luth won the votes of 51.13% of the voters..
Luth is a farmer and a member of the local parliament. Nils Naumann, an independent candidate, ran against him in this election, winning 48.9% of the vote..
According to local media, this is the first time that Germany has witnessed the victory of an extreme right-wing candidate as mayor of a city on a full-time basis.
And the previous cases in which members of the AfD party held the position of mayor were by volunteering to take on this task on a part-time basis, meaning that they had other jobs and were not full-time for the job of the mayor.
Between 2018 and 2020, a member of the Alternative for Germany party assumed the mayorship of a German town located in the west of the country, and although he was dedicated to this position, his victory was not considered a precedent in the history of the party because when he ran, he was not partisan, but rather joined the party later..
Last Sunday, the far-right party also won, for the first time in its history, a district presidency. The district (includes a number of municipalities) that the party won is Sonneberg, located in the Thuringia region in the east of the country as well..
These elections come after opinion polls showed that the popularity of the far-right across Germany is today at one of its highest levels in the post-World War II period..
Opinion polls showed that the popularity of the AfD had risen to the point where it became a major competitor to the Social Democrats led by Olaf Scholz..
#extreme #Germany #wins #mayoralty #time #history