Frauke Petry dumped Alternative for Germany to sit in the Bundestag as an independent, saying she could not stand with an “anarchistic party” that lacked a credible plan to govern.
The 42-year-old had been one of the AfD’s leading lights over the past two years, as the party fed off anti-immigration sentiment to shock the world by winning 12.6 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election.
The result made the AfD the first far-right group to win seats in the Bundestag since the 1950s, a result all the more troubling due to its failure to disassociate itself from comparisons to the Nazis.
Although an outspoken critic of Angela Merkel’s open-door immigration policy, Ms Petry had clashed with senior party figures in recent months, saying she understood why some voters were alarmed at some of their radical rhetoric.
She became less visible since April, when she declined the offer to run the party’s election campaign.
Walking out of the AfD’s press conference, she said: “I’ve decided I won’t be part of the AfD’s group in the German parliament but will initially be an individual member of parliament in the lower house.”
She has said the AfD should be ready to join coalition governments, while other figures said the party should stick to opposition.
All established parties have refused to work with the AfD.
Berlin-based political expert Gero Neugebauer said Ms Petry had realised she would not have much influence in the AfD’s parliamentary group and may see herself in future as a potential leader of a new group attracting likeminded lawmakers.
Other senior party figures played down her importance.
Alexander Gauland, one of AfD’s leading election candidates, told Reuters: “It’s always a shame when someone very talented leaves the party and Frauke Petry is very talented.
“But I must note that she wasn’t much help recently in the campaign.”
Once seen as a radical for transforming the AfD from an obscure group opposed to euro zone financial bailouts into Germany’s leading anti-immigration party, Petry had distanced herself from other top AfD candidates before the election.
She had sought to have the party expel Bjoern Hoecke, a senior party official who courted controversy by denying that Adolf Hitler was “absolutely evil” and calling Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial a “monument of shame”.
Mr Gauland, who replaced Ms Petry in recent months as the party’s most recognisable face, provoked outrage during the election campaign by saying Germans should be proud of their World War Two soldiers and Germany’s immigration minister should be “disposed of” in Turkey where her parents come from.
Ms Petry said she was aiming to bring about a “conservative turning point” in parliament in 2021, the next time Germany is due to hold a national election.
She said: ”I’ll do everything I can to achieve that so the sensible ideas the AfD has been working on since 2013 actually become a political reality.”
She declined to answer further questions, including whether she would remain the AfD’s co-leader, but said the public would hear from her in the coming days.
The party, founded in 2013 by a group of academics opposed to the euro, has long been riven by infighting. Commentators have predicted that its divisions could be amplified by its entry onto the national political stage.
Mr Gauland said neither he nor the other top candidate Alice Weidel nor co-leader Joerg Meuthen knew why Ms Petry left.
Thomas Jaeger, political scientist at Cologne University, said Ms Petry would now need to leave the party, and her decision would likely help the AfD because its parliamentary group would more cohesive without her.