On Saturday, the party executive of the left asked Sahra Wagenknecht to give up her seat in the Bundestag. Now she has reacted – and sharply attacked the party leadership.
The left-wing member of the Bundestag Sahra Wagenknecht has rejected the demand of the party leadership to give up her Bundestag mandate. Since the decision of the party executive a few days ago, many have written to her that they were outraged and only voted for the left because of her in the last federal election, Wagenknecht told the “Spiegel”. “Members are also asking me not to give up my mandate. I won’t do that either.”
The board of the Left Party had asked Wagenknecht to return her Bundestag mandate on Saturday. “The future of the left is a future without Sahra Wagenknecht,” the unanimous decision said. Wagenknecht has “not yet complied with the repeated request to refrain from founding a competing party project,” the statement said.
Left tip to resign
Wagenknecht said according to “Spiegel” that she had announced months ago that she would not run for the left again. It is therefore not new that there is no future together. “Instead of working on me, the party leadership should have dealt with the question of why voters have been running away from the left for years.”
Wagenknecht joined former party leader Klaus Ernst in calling for the entire board to resign. “The board of directors willfully endangers the preservation of the parliamentary group and thus also 200 jobs,” said Wagenknecht. “Of course it would be good if these gamblers resigned and made room for sensible people. But I have no illusions about that.”
Wagenknecht has been at odds with the party leadership around chairmen Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan for months and is toying with the idea of founding a rival party. According to the Left Party, there were concrete recruitment attempts from Wagenknecht’s environment for the new project. Wagenknecht said: “I haven’t spoken to anyone, I’m being approached by local politicians and other members of the left who want a new project because they no longer see any perspective in the left.”