The husband of Frauke Petry, a prominent leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, says he, too, will leave the party.
Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 12.6 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election to win seats in the national parliament for the first time. But Petry, its co-chairwoman since 2015, announced Monday that she wouldn’t join its parliamentary group — and other leaders urged her to leave the party altogether.
“It is clear that this step will follow,” Petry said Tuesday in the eastern city of Dresden, the dpa news agency reports.
Petry’s husband, Marcus Pretzell, the party leader in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and a regional lawmaker there, tells The Associated Press that he is also leaving AfD.
AfD won 94 of the 709 seats in the new German parliament, including Petry’s. It isn’t immediately clear whether any others would follow Petry, who moved AfD’s focus from opposing eurozone bailouts to migration after she took over in 2015, but has been increasingly sidelined in recent months.
— AP
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