BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A German regional lawmaker admitted Friday that he drew a swastika next to a far-right candidate\u2019s name in a state parliament vote and said he was giving up his post as a deputy speaker of the legislature.<\/p>\n
The speaker of the legislature in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said Thursday that someone had drawn the Nazi symbol on a ballot paper in a vote for a regional cross-border body that includes representatives from Germany as well as neighboring France and Switzerland. <\/p>\n
The far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany<\/a> party, known by its acronym AfD, had tried and failed to get nominees elected.<\/p>\n Using the swastika is illegal in Germany and falls under a ban on the symbols of unconstitutional organizations.<\/p>\n The speaker, Muhterem Aras, described the incident as \u201ca disgrace for this parliament.\u201d But, since it was a secret vote, it was not immediately clear who was responsible.<\/p>\n On Friday, Daniel Born, a deputy speaker of the legislature and member of the center-left Social Democrats, said that he had drawn the symbol next to the name of an AfD lawmaker. <\/p>\n He described his actions in a statement as a \u201cserious mistake\u201d and apologized. He said that he was stepping down as deputy speaker and leaving his party\u2019s parliamentary group. <\/p>\n Aras called for him to give up his parliamentary seat, German news agency dpa reported.<\/p>\n Born said that he had not intended to make out that a far-right lawmaker had drawn the symbol. \u201cOn the contrary, in a knee-jerk reaction, I wanted to show that votes for AfD are always votes for right-wing hatred and agitation, no matter in what election,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n AfD has firmly established itself as a force in German politics since it was formed 12 years ago, even as it has drifted steadily to the right. <\/p>\n In Germany\u2019s national election in February<\/a>, it finished second with 20.8% of the vote, and is now the biggest opposition party in Berlin. However, mainstream parties refuse to work with it<\/a>. <\/p>\n Born said in his statement that \u201cit no longer leaves me a minute\u2019s peace\u201d that people are increasingly getting used to the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A German regional lawmaker admitted Friday that he drew a swastika next to a far-right…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[109747,2000,299,4179,1824,36201,40,8615,285,12960,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-295826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-daniel-born","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-germany-government","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-international-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-voting-rights","18":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114925150120053406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}