German election officials have ruled that several communist and anarchist parties will not be allowed to run in this year's Federal elections.
Election officials have overseen applications from 87 different groups, all of whom wish to stand for election to the Bundestag, the national parliament. However, election officials say one communist party failed to submit the appropriate paperwork and rejected an anarchist group's bid to stand on the grounds that their application had only been submitted electronically.
The leftist groups claim that they have been targeted for their political beliefs as opposed to any bureaucratic error.
The German Communist Party, DKP, was one party that is excluded from standing on the grounds that it filed paperwork incorrectly. It will be the first election it has not taken part in since 1968. Other far-left parties have done far better than DKP in the past, however, most leftist votes go to Die Linke (The Left), who usually win around 10% of the national vote share in Germany.
DKP chairman Patrik Köbele said of the expulsion:
"We are convinced that this attempt to ban us [from the election] will fail."
Another party banned from the election is the Anarchistic Pogo Party of Germany, or AAPD who wished to run on the slogan 'work is s***'.
The committee that oversees whether a party should be allowed to run in an election includes one chairman, eight politicians from the most popular political parties, and two judges.
If a party gets the green light from the committee, it must still gather 500 signatures before it is allowed to run.
Current German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be standing down before the election. She has been chancellor of Germany, and the most powerful woman in the world, since 2005.
[h/t: Deutsche Welle]
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