(Bloomberg) -- The eastern German state that triggered political chaos last month reversed course, undoing a vote for the state premiership four weeks after Chancellor Angela Merkel's party joined the far right to elect a rogue candidate.
Lawmakers in Thuringia elected Bodo Ramelow of the anti-capitalist Left Party, whose ouster in a Feb. 5 parliamentary ballot shocked Germany's political establishment. Ramelow, who had governed the state since 2014, was backed by the Social Democrats and the Greens and will lead the rural state in a minority government.
The vote defuses a political drama that sent shockwaves to Berlin and beyond, contributing to the resignation of Merkel's heir-apparent and a fresh leadership race in her Christian Democratic Union. Merkel, who had been traveling to Africa during the vote, called her party's alignment with the AfD “unforgivable.”
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Ramelow's election on Wednesday proceeded as it had been meant to a month ago. Lacking an absolute majority, he was installed in the third round of voting with a plurality of ballots. Merkel's CDU and the AfD either voted no or abstained, while the Free Democrats -- which fielded the rogue candidate -- boycotted the vote.
On Feb. 5, the third ballot took a different course. The FDP's Thomas Kemmerich was the surprise winner with backing from the CDU and AfD. Under withering pressure from the political establishment, he resigned in a matter of days.
To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Chris Reiter
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