Saarland’s CDU leader Hans resigns after election defeat

After his party’s massive defeat in state elections in Germany’s Saarland, party leader and top candidate Tobias Hans takes action.

Saarland Prime Minister Tobias Hans gives a heavy defeat in state elections CDU– Presidency of the State. The 44-year-old said Monday evening after a meeting of the CDU in Saarbrücken that a decision on staff reorganization should be taken at a party conference on May 28. He himself will no longer run for the presidency of the German federal state.

Hans explained that the former speaker of the state parliament, Stephane Toscani, announced his willingness to run for the presidency at the meeting. In March 2018, Hans served as Prime Minister and his successor Annegret Kramp Karenbauer It became, which then turned to federal policy. Since then he has led a major coalition of CDU and SPD at. In the fall of 2018, Hans also assumed the presidency of the CDU in Saarland.

The decision has already been announced

Hans had already announced his decision to resign on Sunday evening after the election: “It is an honor for me to serve this country as prime minister and an honor to serve you as head of the party,” he said.

He ran for the first time in a state election as the top candidate, but his party was unable to defend its position as a stronger force. According to the interim final result, the CDU received only 28.5 percent of the vote and lost more than 12 percentage points compared to the 2017 state election (2017 result: 40.7 percent).

Replaced by SPD after 22 years

The CDU has been the strongest party in the Saar state parliament for more than 22 years. Now it is being replaced by the Social Democratic Party, which won an absolute majority of 43.5 percent and 29 out of 51 seats in the state parliament. Anke Rellinger, the winner of the election, aims to form a unilateral SPD government. Saarland, with a population of nearly one million, is the smallest of the federal states. The 51-member state parliament is the smallest parliament in Germany.

Meanwhile, the leader of the CDU’s parliamentary group in the state parliament, Alexander Funk, was temporarily installed on Monday. Funk confirmed that a CDU congress is scheduled for the end of May, after which the parliamentary group’s executive committee should be re-elected. He said that the presidency of the state and the presidency of the parliamentary blocs are in one hand for the opposition.

(APA)