Roughly twelve hours after the election ended from the weekend....AfD (the anti-immigrant party) had this odd development. Their former boss...Frauke Petry....announced that she was leaving the party.
The news media? Fairly hyped up. You see....she didn't say she was giving up her seat in the Bundestag....set for four years by her victory in her district....but she was going to stay on with the job and represent the district as an independent person.
Last night? Petry appeared on the Sandra Maischberger public forum show on ARD (Channel One from the public TV structure). N-TV news told most of this story.
Petry's answers centered on content....not a political slant. What does this mean?
Across Germany, if you look at how the political party system has developed....there's thirty-odd platforms and some hyped-up sense over future laws which might or might not be passed. It's a brand name that the party is simply using to sell their 'product'.
Petry in someway is suggesting that it's about time to go and talk about individual districts and all the people in that district.....not just from the left, right or center.
Petry went out and bought the web domain...."dieblauen.de" a few months ago. No one really noticed that but it suggests that she had some belief in the AfD falling apart, and that she has a new political party idea. THE BLUE Party.
What makes up the Die Blauen? Unknown. On paper, they don't exist.
If you asked me to take a guess....there are some people who've studied the Macron phenomenon in France and think that you can guild the same apparatus in Germany. Maybe Petry is thinking along these lines.
If you asked most working-class Germans (not the intellectuals or journalists)...most would say that the whole political party apparatus is functioning like a soap opera and solutions to problems are no longer possible, meaning you dream up some fancy solution which seems to solve X-problem but typically creates Y-problem in the process.
I won't say Petry is right on this decision but there's some disgruntled Germans out there who just aren't that happy.
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