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Sahra Wagenknecht: The politician is criticized by her own party members
Photo: Jürgen Heinrich / imago images / Jürgen Heinrich
The two left chairmen Janine Wissler and Susanne Hennig-Wellsow oppose the initiative from their party to expel the former parliamentary group leader Sahra Wagenknecht.
The political opponent is outside the party, not inside, Wissler told the "world".
We are in contact with Wagenknecht, said Wissler.
“There are some differences within our party.
We can discuss them. ”But now it's about the election campaign and about achieving a strong election result, added Wissler, who is also the left's top candidate for the federal election.
Hennig-Wellsow emphasized with a view to the exclusion application against Wagenknecht in the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung" that she said "very clearly that something like this does not work."
The party faces political differences in discussions.
"Exclusion procedures are completely counterproductive."
Hennig-Wellsow also appealed to all party members to put aside content-related differences and to get fully involved in the election campaign.
Incidentally, she considered the motion against Wagenknecht to be "completely unfounded" in the matter.
Last week it became known that several party members from Wagenknecht's state association in North Rhine-Westphalia had filed for exclusion against the former parliamentary group leader, SPIEGEL had first reported on it.
According to the document, comrades accuse the politician of deviating from "elementary principles" of the party and of causing "serious damage" to the left.
Wagenknecht, the top candidate of the NRW left for the Bundestag, had recently sharply criticized her party, she is also controversial because of her statements on refugee policy.
Wagenknecht himself protested against the accusation that she had done serious damage to the party with her new book The Self-Righteous.
"This is not a book about the Die Linke party," she told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.
"It is a book against a certain understanding of left politics, which we also have in our party, but which also exists in the SPD and in many European left-wing parties." That makes these parties weaker.
mjm / AFP