Recently there was the thing with the paper airplanes. The Bavarian Left is calling for a ban on private jets, and the “absurd” activities of the “super-rich” must be denied permission to take off. “The climate impact of one hour of private flight corresponds to the annual CO² emissions of a normal earner,” explained Left Party top candidate Adelheid Rupp at a press event at which a bed of more than 1,000 paper airplanes was spread out. No, there is no shortage of striking demands and sometimes strange ideas in this left-wing election campaign: from the care flash mob to the criminal complaint against Prime Minister Markus Söder after a raid on climate activists. Or a nightly guerrilla poster campaign that exposed empty residential buildings in Munich. “Speak up in order to be heard” is Rupp’s credo, who sat in the state parliament for the SPD years ago and now wants to do this for the first time with her new party.
Only, nothing happens. The Left was not present at the presentation of the latest BR Bavaria trend. No bar of its own, which means: less, perhaps even a lot less than three percent in the renowned survey. The party that sits in the Bundestag and in some state governments ranks somewhere under Other in the Free State. In 2018 there was also a last Bavarian trend before the state elections. And then suddenly there were these five percent in the polls – extremely inspiring, even if the Left was unable to achieve this three weeks later and missed entry into the Maximilianeum. There is no such spark of hope now, even though the regional association is conducting what is probably the most zealous election campaign in its history. Realists would have to say: Nothing will happen!
What’s the matter, Ms. Rupp? She doesn’t want to “gloss over” the survey, but it could still work. In any case, the approval rating does not reflect what one experiences at election campaign stands: great openness and the need for a clear socio-political course. Rupp’s gaze goes across the border to the Austrian state of Salzburg. In April, the communist KPÖ came into parliament from a standing start and clearly with a campaign for the common good instead of profit-making – focus on housing. Although Salzburg has a similar conservative structure to Bavaria. And although surveys wouldn’t have suggested that for a long time.
We will continue to fight, she says, so that “a real opposition” gets into the state parliament; She denies this to the Greens and her former SPD party. What Rupp wants to promote in the final spurt: “Choose your true beliefs!” She knows Social Democrats where the Left came first in the polls. And then they shamefully changed the parameters so that it would fit again.