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| - Lawmakers in the eastern German state of Thuringia will try again to elect a new state premier Wednesday, re-running a vote that plunged Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling CDU party into what has been described as the biggest crisis in its history. It is the second attempt in a month to form a working government in the former East German state, after CDU MPs there set off an earthquake in national politics by voting with the far-right AfD in February. Amid the national outrage, the liberal candidate elected during the first vote on February 5 stepped down, leaving the state rudderless. But more significantly, the apparent cooperation of CDU politicians with the far right triggered the departure of Merkel's designated successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and sparked a new leadership contest for the German chancellor's party. The race to a new CDU leadership election on April 25 is a fresh struggle for control between supporters of the chancellor's centrist course and those who believe the party must tack right. But so far none has offered a convincing answer to the CDU's conundrum in Thuringia, squeezed between the extremes of left and right. Former state premier Bodo Ramelow of the far left is now up against far-right firebrand Bjoern Hoecke. But hours before the vote, Ramelow spared Merkel's party an impossible choice by saying he would not rely on their votes to secure a mandate, withdrawing an earlier threat to seek new elections if he failed to win the vote with an outright majority. A fundamental article of faith for the CDU during its decades of dominance over German politics since 1949 was that no political force could be allowed to emerge to its right. But Merkel has shifted the party to closer to the centre. The repeated rescue programmes for Greece during the eurozone crisis and above all Merkel's decision to allow in more than one million migrants and refugees since 2015 stoked the rise of the AfD. Double-digit scores for AfD in state elections in the East in recent years have made it increasingly tough to build working coalitions that shut out both the far right and the radical-left Left party. With the party leadership -- and likely the candidacy for the chancellorship in 2021 -- now up for grabs, those tensions are boiling up to the surface. Some contenders such as long-time Merkel rival Friedrich Merz are advocating a return to the party's conservative roots and winning back voters lost to AfD. Meanwhile moderates argue the party cannot hope to hang on to masses of centrist supporters if it abandons Merkel's course. With no majority possible in Thuringia without either AfD or the Left, the state has become a unique crucible for the CDU's repeated declarations that it would work with neither. Earlier this month, its MPs voted with AfD to install Thomas Kemmerich from the liberal FDP as state premier, ousting popular Left premier Ramelow. Faced with national outrage at the unprecedented alliance, the Thuringian CDU branch immediately backed down and its leader quit. Yet a potential cooperation with the Left has proven equally controversial. "CDU votes for a Left party candidate are unacceptable," moderate party leadership contender Armin Laschet said Sunday, echoing conservative rivals like Merz. Ramelow -- whose previous broad left coalition is four votes short of an absolute majority -- had been hoping to persuade individual CDU MPs to edge him over the line in the first round of voting, failing which his Left party would seek new elections. Yet on Wednesday, he told local media that he was now happy to wait until the third round of voting, in which he would need only to secure the most number of votes cast. Meanwhile there is little chance of AfD contender Hoecke winning. One of the most radical voices within AfD, the former history teacher's rhetoric includes calls for "tempered inhumanity" in removing non-ethnic Germans from the country. Such statements have placed him beyond the pale even for the more hardline eastern CDU branches. kih/hmn/gd
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