parties
Gysi: Wagenknecht “far” with plans to split off from the left
Will Sahra Wagenknecht soon found a new party? photo
© Wolfgang Kumm/dpa
Sahra Wagenknecht has been toying with founding a rival party to the left for a long time. According to left-wing politician Gregor Gysi, these are already quite concrete.
The plans of the left-wing members of the Bundestag According to her party colleague Gregor Gysi, Sahra Wagenknecht’s support for founding a new party is well advanced. “She is already pretty far along with her considerations for a spinoff,” Gysi told the “Frankfurter Rundschau.” Gysi tries to stop her. “I’m trying to mediate that,” he said. According to his own statements, he had a conversation with Wagenknecht a few days ago.
The former head of the Left parliamentary group has been toying with founding a rival party to the Left for months. She has fallen out in a dispute over direction with her party and the chairmen Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan.
She accuses the left of having distanced itself from the interests of its core clientele of low-income earners and ordinary people. In the event of a new party being founded, it is expected that several of the 39 members of the Bundestag would leave the Left along with Wagenknecht. With fewer than 37 mandates, the parliamentary group status would be lost and with it money, positions and influence of the small opposition party.
Gysi warned that it would be “immoral” if Wagenknecht and her colleagues took their Bundestag mandates with them. “But they probably still want to do it,” Gysi told the newspaper. But he also expects that Wagenknecht’s departure from the left will strengthen the party’s will to survive. “If Sahra were to leave, then a new fighting spirit will emerge so that the left does not perish,” said Gysi.