Immigrants are fleeing the region and some of spoken of fears their lives with ‘go up in flames’.
AfD supporters at a rally in Saxony-Anhalt (Image: Getty)
Migrants fear the rise of the far-right in Germany as the AfD political party looks set to take control of a state in the country for the first time. Germany’s federal 16-state system means governors hold extensive powers, including over security and education.
The country’s Nazi wartime past means the electorate has on the whole shied away from right-wing parties, but increasing concerns of immigration and illegal migrant has seen the Alternative for Germany (AfD) soar in popularity in recent years. Now several polls show a large lead for AfD ahead of the election to the state legislature for Saxony-Anhalt, a region home to around two million voters.
Taking control of a state government would be the biggest prize in the party’s 13-year history, a political shock to Germany and at least a symbolic blow to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Cardiologist Ayman Alyoussef is one of around one million Syrian-heritage people living in Germany, of which around 930,000 hold Syria citizenship.
AfD campaign poster reads ‘a country without illegals’ (Image: Getty)
InfoMigrants reports he said patients were grateful when a foreigner helped them in hospital, but on the street “they don’t know that I am a cardiologist. They think I am just a foreigner receiving assistance from the city. That is why they say they don’t want someone like me here.”
Mr Alyoussef said it felt like that was the “problem”.
Afghan immigrant Rezwaan Talash, 24, told AFP, works in a computer shop in Magdeburg, in Saxony-Anhalt. He told the agency he had worries about his life if AfD came to power, adding: “Whether I’ll still have my life the way it is now, that’s a question and a fear that’s always on my mind.”
Mr Talash said some of his family had fled the state ahead of the election because they feared the way they lived their lives could “suddenly go up in flames”.
Ulrich Siegmund, lead candidate of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) (Image: Getty)
The state election in eastern Germany on Sunday could produce the first far-right state governor in the country’s post-World War II history as Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his unpopular national government struggle to dispel what he calls “widespread moroseness.”
“If AfD wins the election and forms the government, that would be kind of breaking a taboo in Germany,” said Wolfgang Merkel, a political science professor with the WBZ Berlin Social Science Centre. Modern Germany so far has been “an exception” in Europe in having no radical right-wing party governing at the national, state or big-city level, he added.
Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union has led Saxony-Anhalt, a region west of Berlin that’s among the country’s less prosperous and is home to 2.1 million of Germany’s 83.5 million people, since 2002. But it faces strong headwinds.
In last year’s national election, AfD achieved the best postwar showing by a far-right party, with 20.8% of the vote. It became Germany’s biggest opposition party.
It was stronger in the ex-communist east, including Saxony-Anhalt. And with Merz’s government struggling to convince voters it can turn around a stubbornly slow economy, it has gained in national polls as it harnesses discontent with issues beyond its signature theme of curbing migration.
“This is a historic opportunity that we have here in Saxony-Anhalt,” its candidate for governor, Ulrich Siegmund, told The Associated Press at a campaign event in the small town of Moeser, where supporters lined up to meet the charismatic 35-year-old over beer and sausages. “We will write history here.”
Among his top priorities, Siegmund lists “the deportation of people who are illegal, a deportation offensive and above all dropping the incentives for why people come here and exploit our social system.”
He wants to initiate a long process to withdraw Saxony-Anhalt from the regional public broadcaster, citing concerns about “disinformation.”
AfD’s first and so far only head of a county administration was elected in 2023 in neighboring Thuringia state. A state administration would be a far bigger prize, fueling the party’s ambitions of further gains and one day governing at the national level.
In Saxony-Anhalt, AfD wants to allow home schooling, which so far isn’t permitted in Germany. It pledges to ban schools from officially raising the rainbow flag and ensure they fly the national flag. It opposes taxpayers’ money being “given away” to Ukraine and says it would push to lift sanctions against Russia, but that isn’t a matter state governments can decide.
“No one here needs to be afraid, quite the contrary,” Siegmund said. “Every honest person in Saxony-Anhalt will benefit from an AfD-led government.”