After more than two decades in the Bundestag – first for the PDS, then for the Left – MP Petra Pau has announced her retirement. The Berliner gave her party advice for survival.
The long-time left-wing MP Petra Pau is retiring from the Bundestag next year. The 61-year-old announced at the state party conference of the Berlin Left that she would no longer run in the next federal election.
This means that the party is losing another prominent representative in parliament in the middle of a deep crisis and with poor poll numbers.
“2025 will be my 27th year in the Bundestag,” said Pau. In addition, at almost 19 years old, she is the longest-serving vice president there. That was associated with challenges. “I would like to thank everyone who helped me with this.”
In the Bundestag since 1998
Pau, who was temporarily the Berlin PDS leader from 1992, entered the Bundestag in 1998 and became vice president in 2006. Pau represented her party – and its predecessor PDS – for a long time as an East Berlin direct candidate.
At times she and Gesine Lötzsch, who was also directly elected in Berlin, were the only members of the PDS when they failed to pass the five percent hurdle in 2002. Lötzsch has also announced her departure from the Bundestag in 2025.
Warning about insignificance of the party
After the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance split off, the Left is in a deep crisis and is only polling at three to four percent nationwide.
The chairmen Martin Schirdewan and Janine Wissler have announced their withdrawal from the party leadership. At the federal party conference in Halle from October 18th to 20th, the former Bundestag member Jan van Aken and the journalist Ines Schwerdtner want to run as the new dual leadership.
There would be two options at this party conference, Pau explained in her speech. Either the party pulls itself together to become a “sought-after alternative in the 21st century” or it falls into insignificance. A change in personnel alone does not help. The left needs renewal. “The party as a whole has to move forward.”
In addition to social justice, Pau named the impending climate catastrophe and digitalization as central future issues. “That’s why leftists in the 21st century have to be reds, but at the same time greens and pirates, mind you: red greens and red pirates.”