Economics
German Populists Choose Two to Campaign After Sidelining Leader
- AfD select Gauland, Weidel after rebuking co-leader Petry
- Petry, AfD’s public face, calls delegates’ decision ‘mistake’
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Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, struggling to unite amid increasingly public infighting, selected two candidates to lead the party in the national parliament election this year a day after it sidelined its most popular leader.
The AfD selected Alexander Gauland, 76, a former member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats who abandoned the party for the political right, and Alice Weidel, 38, an economist who has called for the abolition of the European Central Bank, for the Sept. 24 contest. The decision Sunday came after delegates at a conference in the western German city of Cologne rebuked an attempt by co-leader Frauke Petry, 41, to steer the AfD to the mainstream, a step she called “a mistake.”