The left
Ramelow wants Wagenknecht to decide to found a party
Bodo Ramelow wants to go into the state elections in Thuringia next year again as the Left’s top candidate. photo
© Michael Reichel/dpa
Only in Thuringia does the Left have a Prime Minister. The party wants it to stay that way even after the state elections in 2024, but the challenges are great – and not just because of the AfD.
Thuringia’s left-wing Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow has criticized the behavior of Bundestag member Sahra Wagenknecht when she was considering founding her own party. “Start your party, but then do it now,” said Ramelow on Saturday at a state party conference of the Thuringian Left in Erfurt. “Please stop getting in our way.”
Ramelow wants to run again next year as the Left’s top candidate in the state elections in Thuringia. The left-wing politician said that he personally wouldn’t mind if Wagenknecht “stood by our side.” But a decision is now necessary.
Wagenknecht had announced that the decision about founding a party should be made by the end of the year. The possible Wagenknecht party would be in competition with the left. Surveys suggest some vote potential for the left-wing politician.
Dual leadership of the Thuringian Left
At the party conference, the Thuringian Left confirmed its top duo in office, who will lead the party into the state elections in 2024. Weimar lawyer Ulrike Grosse-Röthig and university politician Christian Schaft were re-elected as party leaders.
Grosse-Röthig received 64.7 percent of the delegate votes, Schaft 81.3 percent. There were no opposing candidates. The 43-year-old and the 32-year-old have formed the first dual leadership of the Thuringian Left since 2021. “We are going into the election campaign in difficult times,” said Ramelow.
The goal, as in 2019, is to become the strongest political force and continue to provide the Prime Minister, emphasized Schaft. In representative election surveys this summer, the Left, which had received 31 percent of the vote in the 2019 state election, was around 22 percent behind the AfD, which the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified as right-wing extremist, with 32 percent and roughly on a par with the CDU.
After their vote together with the FDP and AfD on reducing the real estate transfer tax in the state parliament, the Thuringian CDU accused Ramelow of having pursued a kind of “government in opposition”. “Dear CDU, are you aware that you are opening doors that you can no longer close?” he asked. The tax cut was not a vote “in which the AfD only voted” – rather, the change in the law would not have been possible without the AfD’s votes.