The decision by the board of the Left Party to ask the controversial MP Wagenknecht to give up her mandate caused unrest. Group leader Ali considers this “a big mistake”. Others are calling for the board to resign.
The leader of the Left Party, Amira Mohamed Ali, has sharply criticized the board’s decision on the controversial MP Sahra Wagenknecht. She considers the decision to ask Wagenknecht to return the Bundestag mandate to be a “big mistake and unworthy of a party that is committed to solidarity and plurality,” Ali wrote on Twitter.
Mohamed Ali wrote: “We have an important task towards our voters and all the people who have no voice without us.” The leader of the left parliamentary group emphasized: “Making board resolutions against your own members and going public is not one of them!”
Wissler: The party is being questioned from within
In a unanimously agreed statement, the Left Board had asked Wagenknecht to return her Bundestag mandate and declared that she would see the future of the party without her. Party leader Janine Wissler justified the procedure by saying that she was questioning the party from within. The board “fights for the unity of the party and against all attempts to split it,” she said. “From our point of view it is clear: Sahra has made her decision.”
Wissler spoke of a “Sword of Damocles hanging over the party”. To date, she has not complied with repeated requests to refrain from founding a competing party project.
Ernst and Ulrich: Board splits party
The former party chairman Klaus Ernst and the parliamentary secretary of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Alexander Ulrich, called on the federal executive board to “declare his complete resignation”.
The demand for Wagenknecht to return her mandate was “absurd,” the statement said. Ernst and Ulrich accused the Left Board, led by the two chairmen Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan, of “dividing the party with this decision and leading it to become irrelevant”.
They would destroy “what others have built,” according to the accusation. Without others having founded and promoted the Left Party, today’s leadership would never have gotten into their positions. Wagenknecht speaks “for millions of people in the population and for thousands of members of the party base who no longer feel represented by this board and its course,” said the two members of the Bundestag.
Wagenknecht wants to found a new party
Wagenknecht only confirmed in an interview on Friday that they were holding talks about founding a new party. Despite the Left leadership’s request to decide soon whether to remain in the party, she had reaffirmed her plan to wait until the end of the year to make this decision.
Former party leader Bernd Riexinger told the RND newspapers that out of respect for his own party, which owes Wagenknecht a lot, “the resignation would be the right way”. Preparing a mandate for a new party from an existing mandate for a party “is not fair,” said Riexinger.
Left Party slipped to 4.9 percent
The hurdles for exclusion procedures are generally very high. The left had slipped to 4.9 percent in the 2021 federal election, and it only managed to re-enter parliament as a parliamentary group by winning three direct mandates. The party is currently at four to five percent in nationwide polls.