The SPD and the left are setting the pace in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Less than three weeks after the state elections, they are starting coalition negotiations for a red-red state government.
Schwerin - Almost three weeks after the state elections, the coalition negotiations between the SPD and the left to form a state government in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania begin this Friday.
The first meeting should not be about political content, but about the structure of the upcoming talks and about the formation of working groups for the individual topics, as reported from circles of the SPD.
Both sides want the coalition negotiations to be concluded by mid-November. According to the constitution, a new prime minister must be elected by 23 November at the latest. The Left is already planning its party congress to vote on the coalition agreement for November 20th. If things go faster, November 13th is also an option, said country manager Sandro Smolka.
According to observers, major points of contention are hardly to be expected. Political scientist Wolfgang Muno from the University of Rostock told the German Press Agency: "The Left is very humble and apparently makes very modest demands." In the election on September 26th, the party achieved a single-digit result for the first time with 9.9 percent . But she is strategically very well positioned and has avoided any internal party discussion after the losses. "At least nothing has leaked out."
The SPD state chairman and Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig announced on Wednesday that she wanted to start coalition negotiations with the Left. The Social Democrats had previously held exploratory talks with all parties represented in the new state parliament except the AfD. Finally, the SPD decided against its previous government partner, the CDU, and also against a traffic light coalition with the FDP and the Greens.
"We see a partner in the Left Party with whom we can advance our country together," Schwesig said on Wednesday evening. There was already agreement on a large number of important points: for example, compliance with collective bargaining agreements should be anchored in the state procurement law and a school package with a total of 1000 positions for schools and vocational schools should be put together. The active voting age is to be reduced to 16 years. There is to be a nationwide on-call bus system and a discounted senior citizen ticket, and a climate protection law is to be passed. At the same time, Schwesig promised to set up future budgets without new debts and thus to adhere to the debt brake.
With a view to the joint state governments of the SPD with the PDS / Die Linke as junior partner from 1998 to 2006, a red-red government is not a revolutionary innovation in MV, said political scientist Muno.
He assumes that the education department will play an important role in the coalition negotiations and that left-wing top candidate Simone Oldenburg will take over the department.
"The only question is where the 1000 teachers who were called for by the left in the election campaign should come from."
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The deputy federal chairwoman of the CDU, Julia Klöckner, has sharply criticized the SPD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the desired coalition with the left.
"The fact that the SPD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania wants to form a coalition with the left, whose chairman was probably an unofficial employee of the GDR State Security, leaves one amazed at the SPD's forgetting of history," said Klöckner on Thursday in Berlin.
The chairman of the Left in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is Torsten Koplin.
He served in the GDR with the "Feliks Dzierzynski" military guard regiment of the State Security Service in Berlin.
After this full-time activity, according to an earlier report by the Stasi inspection commission of the state parliament, he later entered into an unofficial collaboration.
He himself had already confessed to his past several times.
dpa
