Petry appears on a large screen after being elected as leader of the AfD while former leader Lucke listens to her speech at the AfD’s party congress in Essen.
Reuters/Essen, Germany
The founder of the eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) lost a leadership vote yesterday to his rival, heralding a new focus on immigration for a party set up to oppose the euro.
Frauke Petry, who represents the AfD in the assembly of the state of Saxony, won 60% of the vote at an extraordinary party conference.
After his defeat, Bernd Lucke left open his future in the party that he founded. He had wanted the AfD to focus on economic issues rather than immigration.
An acrimonious feud between the two rivals, who had said that they could not work together, had hit the AfD’s ratings and left it floundering at a time when it could have capitalised on anger over Greece’s debt crisis.
“Please give me a few months’ time to lead this party back on track,” a smiling Petry said.
Petry belongs to the AfD’s national conservative wing and has flirted with the anti-Islam PEGIDA movement, which drew up to 25,000 people to rallies earlier this year.
Her supporters have criticised Lucke for distancing the AfD from anti-Islam protests and expressed concern about the “erosion of Germany’s sovereignty and identity”.
Amid booing from opponents and cheering from supporters, Lucke said in a speech to the conference before the vote that the row had hurt the party.
“We publicly argued ourselves to shreds,” he said. “This has cost and is costing our party and I deeply regret that ... our opponents in the old parties are feasting on it.”
Turmoil in the AfD suits Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, who had lost some support to the AfD.
Until now the party has had three co-leaders, including both Petry and Lucke.
Under the party’s rules Petry will take over as the sole chairman at the end of the year.
