Dietmar Bartsch remains parliamentary group leader of the Left for the time being – but alone. Co-chair Amira Mohamed Ali is leaving her post as planned. Despite the averted vacancy at the top of the group, the future of the party remains uncertain.
Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch will remain in office indefinitely and will lead the MPs alone – without his co-chair Amira Mohamed Ali. The Bundestag faction unanimously agreed on this at the suggestion of Left Party leader Janine Wissler, a spokesman confirmed ARD capital studio. The new election of the parliamentary group leadership, which is actually due next week, has been postponed.
The background is the complicated situation of the Left before the expected split of MP Sahra Wagenknecht and her supporters. Bartsch and Mohamed Ali announced in the summer that they would no longer run for parliamentary group leadership.
Because no successor could be found at short notice, the new election scheduled for September 4th was canceled. The dual leadership continued in office. Your mandate ends normally on October 25th, next week. Now the party leadership proposed the interim solution with Bartsch as the sole chairman. Mohamed Ali, however, is letting her term expire.
Hanging match in the argument with Wagenknecht
If, as expected, Wagenknecht founds his own party and leaves the Bundestag faction with its supporters, the faction status of the current 38 left-wing MPs would be lost. The Left could continue as a group with the consent of the other parties in the Bundestag – but with less state financial support, less speaking time and fewer right-wingers in parliament. Due to a lack of money, employees would probably have to be laid off.
According to reports, the party leadership did not want to propose anything new in this deadlock, but rather spoke to Bartsch about an extension. The 65-year-old is considered one of the most famous politicians on the left. He has held high party positions since the early 1990s, initially in the PDS and later also in the Left.