The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Left party congress: election manifesto decided

2021-06-25T08:04:07.093Z


At the party congress, the moods calmed down: the left swears to fight against the Union. But next week new trouble threatens because of Sahra Wagenknecht.


Enlarge image

The party chairmen Susanne Hennig-Wellsow and Janine Wissler

Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa

On Sunday morning shortly after 9 a.m., the left could have had another real argument. The North Rhine-Westphalian delegate Ralf Krämer proposed an amendment to the election manifesto. Should the left really demand "open borders" for everyone? Kramer calls this "irresponsible and problematic", it is a "mere, illusory slogan". The party had bitterly debated this issue three years ago. This time it didn't happen. A majority of the delegates refused to even debate it.

At the election program party conference on Saturday and Sunday, the left hardly entered into a controversial debate.

The party is concerned a few months before the general election.

In some surveys, it is dangerously approaching the five percent threshold.

Internally, there are disputes that range from threats to split up and requests for exclusionary procedures.

Hennig-Wellsow has a clarifying conversation with Lafontaine

The comrades wanted to free themselves from this at the party congress.

Motto: cool down.

Content differences have been postponed.

Should the left reconsider its categorical no to missions abroad?

A corresponding request from Matthias Höhn, security policy spokesman for the parliamentary group, was cleared beforehand.

Should the left continue to fight for the strong, social nation-state or can social justice only be achieved in a European republic?

This motion was also postponed at the insistence of the party executive.

Instead of fundamental debates, the party demonstrated unity.

"We're not going to the ground," said co-party leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow to her comrades on Saturday.

It was a combative speech with which she wanted to bring her party friends to their senses.

The party leader actually defused one of the conflicts shortly before the party congress. The co-party founder Oskar Lafontaine had called for disputes in his regional association not to vote in the Saarland with the second vote. Hennig-Wellsow drove to Saarland on Friday and had a clarifying one-on-one conversation. Apparently that led Lafontaine to clarify. "We have to make every effort to get back into the Bundestag," he said, surprisingly, to the editorial network Germany (RND) on Saturday.

A success for Hennig-Wellsow, who had already promised when she took office that she wanted to take the "Thuringian Way".

In Thuringia, the left managed to stand next to a divided CDU as a close team and now conducts government affairs as a matter of course in the Erfurt State Chancellery.

The top candidates Janine Wissler and Dietmar Bartsch also called for unity on Sunday.

Bartsch reaffirmed the left's will to govern.

"We are ready to take on the mighty." However, he also warned.

The Greens' program suggests a black-green coalition.

In any case, there could be no question of a shift to the left with the Greens.

Future climate policy will only be social with the left.

"We make politics for the Polo driver and not for the Tesla disciple," Bartsch said of his party.

Wissler sharply criticized the Union.

The left is the only party that will definitely not form a coalition with the CDU.

"The politics of lost time must come to an end," said Wissler, referring to their climate policy.

"Here human rights are trampled underfoot," she said, referring to refugee policy.

She pointed out the cases of right-wing extremism in the security authorities and reiterated that the left must think social and political freedom together.

More vacation and cheaper sparkling wine

With just under 88 percent, the left has decided on its election program.

A call from the left-wing youth to abolish the champagne tax caused amusement.

At the request of the Left, the statutory vacation entitlement is to be increased from the current 24 to 36 days per year.

More vacation and cheaper sparkling wine, the party was able to quickly agree on this on this hot weekend.

Otherwise it remained largely with the draft of the party chairman.

The Left wants a higher minimum wage, higher taxation for higher earners, a nationwide rent cap and an alignment of wages and pensions in the east.

The no to armed drones, arms exports and any foreign missions will remain, which should not make possible government options at the federal level any easier.

Some feared or hoped for a cleansing thunderstorm for the party congress.

That didn't happen at the weekend.

If the party leadership manages to further defuse the personal hostility in the party, much would be gained for the left.

However, the contentious disputes have not been settled, as an appointment in the coming week shows.

On Tuesday, Sahra Wagenknecht will perform in downtown Leipzig at the invitation of Sören Pellmann, member of the Bundestag.

Most of the controversy over the past few months has ignited Wagenknecht and her theses.

The Saxon left-wing member of the state parliament, Jule Nagel, called on her party to reject it last week. "We find it unbearable that you are offering her such a platform, which has opposed the principles of our party, especially in the past few weeks," she wrote with a party friend in an email that SPIEGEL received. Wagenknecht played people against each other "in a perfidious manner". Some fear that there could even be left-wing protests at Wagenknecht's appearance in Leipzig. According to the organizers, canceling the appointment was out of the question.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-06-25

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.