Status: 15.01.2024, 11:06 a.m.
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Sahra Wagenknecht sits at the presentation of the party "Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht - for Reason and Justice" (BSW) at the Federal Press Conference. © Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
A week ago, the new Wagenknecht Party was founded in Berlin. Now the alliance is making its first mark in Rhineland-Palatinate. And it comes with a surprise.
Mainz - The non-attached member of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament Andreas Hartenfels is now a member of the new party Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). It occurred last week, the BSW told the German Press Agency. One week after the official founding of the party, the BSW wanted to introduce itself in Rhineland-Palatinate on Monday "in terms of content and personnel".
Hartenfels was elected to the state parliament in 2011 as a candidate for the Greens in Kusel in the West Palatinate. In October 2022, the 57-year-old had declared his resignation from the parliamentary group and party, citing, among other things, the foreign and peace policy of the federal party.
"We are pleased about the entry of Andreas Hartenfels," said party founder and member of the Bundestag Sahra Wagenknecht of the dpa. "Just one week after its founding, the BSW is now also represented in the state parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate. That's a good sign."
At a time when the federal government is "losing all trust through its haphazard actions and incompetence, and more and more citizens feel politically homeless," a new political force is needed that enjoys support in East and West. "For this, it is very important to be anchored in the state parliaments," said the former Left politician.
Hartenfels said he joined the BSW "because I am still stunned by how quickly the Greens have kicked the white dove of peace on a blue background into the bin and are now the hawks of this federal government - the olive-green hawks. At this point, the Greens have even overtaken the AfD on the right," he told dpa.
The BSW announced that Alexander Ulrich, a member of the Bundestag from Rhineland-Palatinate, would build up the party structures in the state. Ulrich, who resigned from the Left Party in October 2023, is the only Rhineland-Palatinate native among the 44 founding members of the new party. The alliance initially wants to take in 450 party members nationwide, 28 of them in Rhineland-Palatinate.
"We are positioning ourselves broadly in society," Ulrich announced, adding that Hartenfels would be "our voice in the Mainz state parliament." Former soccer player Andreas Buck and screenwriter Stephan Falk are also "faces" of BSW. They stand for "the spectrum of people who have not felt politically represented for a long time". Ulrich said that as a trade unionist he stood "for good work and fair pay".
In Saarland, the BSW currently has 13 members. "But of course there will be more in the further course," the party announced. Wagenknecht lives with her husband, the former left-wing politician Oskar Lafontaine, in Merzig-Silwingen, Saarland.
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The 54-year-old herself leads the new party in a dual leadership with Amira Mohamed Ali, the former chairwoman of the now dissolved Left faction in the Bundestag. The new party wants to run for the first time in the European elections on 9 June, and later also in the state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia in September. Dpa