Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig, who with her SPD clearly won the state elections at the end of September, has announced coalition negotiations with the Die Linke party in Mecklenburg-Vopommern. The CDU, which has been co-ruling up to now, thus remains the opposition role.
From 1998 to 2006 the SPD had already ruled in the northeast together with the PDS / Die Linke as a junior partner. The alliance forged at the time by the then Prime Minister Harald Ringstorff against the will of the Federal SPD caused discussions as the first red-red state government in Germany.
In the new state parliament in Schwerin, with 79 members, Red-Red would have a stable majority with 43 seats, 34 members of the SPD alone. On Wednesday evening, Schwesig first informed the state executive, party council and the strengthened parliamentary group about the progress of the explorations before she appeared in front of the press. After the election, the negotiating group she led had both talks with the previous partner, the CDU, as well as with the Left, Greens and the FDP.
With the intended change of government partner, Schwesig is possibly also reacting to the desolate situation at the CDU, which suffered heavy electoral defeats in the state and federal government and is looking for new executives. Schwesig had always emphasized that he wanted to form a stable government with reliable partners. That seems more likely to her with the left than with a CDU, in which the rather inexperienced Franz-Robert Liskow moves to the top of the parliamentary group and in which the party chairmanship with the 67-year-old former CDU top candidate Eckhardt Rehberg is only provisionally occupied is.
The CDU reacted with little surprise to Schwesig’s decision. “Even before the election it was clear that the SPD had little interest in continuing the coalition,” said Rehberg. Politically and personally, the left was apparently much cheaper than his party. CDU parliamentary group leader Liskow announced a tough opposition course. “The aim of our opposition work will not be to open trenches, but we will not spare anyone either,” he said.
In the left, there had been no resignations despite the sobering election result at the state level. Although the party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania only achieved a single-digit result with 9.9 percent for the first time, the influential top candidate Simone Oldenburg was unanimously re-elected as parliamentary leader. The sharp-tongued former headmistress is considered the first candidate for a ministerial office. With nine MPs left, the left is likely to lay claim to only two departments. With the same number of the eight ministries so far, this would mean one more for the SPD.