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German far-right politician wins leadership contest

nrt/jkApril 6, 2009

Voigt has led the party for 13 years but has recently been criticized inside the NPD in the wake of a finance scandal that threatens to bankrupt the party. Sixty-two percent of the delegates voted for Voigt.

https://p.dw.com/p/HQsF
NPD leader Udo Voigt faces the press after the German parliament slapped a 2.2 million euro fine on the far-right PartyImage: AP

Udo Voigt, party leader since 1996, beat challenger Udo Pastoers by winning 136 of 218 votes at the Berlin NPD party convention. Hundreds of police prevented more than 650 protestors from disrupting the two-day event at a municipal building in an outer borough of the German capital.

About 450 police blocked off a road leading up to the building and prevented the crowd from approaching the entrance.

"We plan to have a compact team assembled for the 2009 election ... We are a German-friendly party, and consider the German people to be in danger," spokesman Klaus Beier said on Sunday after leaving the convention.

The NPD, which is represented in Germany in state and local government, but not at federal level, is in financial difficulty after the German parliament fined it for accounting irregularities. It has until next month to pay a balance of 2.2 million euros although it has lodged an appeal against the fine.

The political party is frequently the target of German prosecutors for its neo-Nazi stances.

State prosecutors charged Voigt last month with inciting racial hatred for comments about a German soccer player.

In a pamphlet, published to coincide with the 2006 World Cup, the NPD insinuated that Patrick Owomoyela, born of a German mother and a Nigerian father, was not worthy to play for Germany.

The party has some 7,000 members in Germany. Last year it took seats on every local council it contested in the eastern state of Saxony and won 25.3 percent in a neo-Nazi stronghold near the Czech border.