A German district administrator has announced his resignation from the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) after more than 20 years as a member, claiming the party’s asylum and migration policy is too ideologically driven and not borne out of reality.
Stefan Kerth, the district administrator of Vorpommern-Rügen in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern told local party members on Monday that he was stepping back from the party and unleashed a scathing critique of the federal government’s approach to the ongoing migrant crisis enveloping Germany.
“For a long time now, I have perceived the politics of the SPD and the left-of-center political camp as being too strongly driven by ideology and insufficiently oriented towards the reality of life,” said Kerth, as cited by Zeit Online.
He expressed it had been a difficult decision for him to leave the party but claimed that local governments and authorities were experiencing a “declining ability to enforce the rule of law” and warned that “without a clear monopoly of violence on the part of the state, parallel societies develop their own monopolies on violence.”
Kerth attributed the surge in electoral support toward the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the federal government’s refusal to implement a sustainable migration policy and claimed that the current level of taxpayer-funded support for newcomers was causing resentment among voters.
“According to my observation, the success of the AfD is a direct result of a policy that many perceive as aloof and unrealistic.
“That too, welfare money. It promotes the utopia of an effortless life. It’s not socially fair,” he said.
The district administrator announced his intention to remain in his post and made no suggestions that he was seeking to defect to another political party.
Last week, polling conducted by INSA on behalf of the Bild tabloid newspaper revealed that nearly two-thirds of all German citizens want the country’s federal government to impose a ban on migration from predominantly Muslim nations as an increasing percentage of the electorate grows tired of the rising numbers and social disintegration.
A similar story was told in a state-run ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll from earlier this month which showed that 64 percent of Germans wanted the country to take in fewer immigrants, with the same number believing that Germany faces more disadvantages than advantages when it comes to immigration.