As of: February 19, 2024, 8:11 p.m
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Split
Visitors to a party conference walk past the Left Party logo.
© Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa/Symbolbild
The Left still has 28 members in the Bundestag.
But even the small group doesn't always agree.
This was evident in the choice of their top.
Berlin - The MPs Sören Pellmann and Heidi Reichinnek will in future lead the Left group in the Bundestag.
The members elected the new dual leadership at a meeting in Berlin on Monday - albeit with very close results in two battle votes.
This is a setback for party leaders Martin Schirdewan and Janine Wissler - they had hoped for an amicable solution with broad majorities.
Schirdewan nevertheless said afterwards: “What we had here today was an honest debate.” The group made its decision as they made it.
Now put the common interest first.
The Left should become strong again and enter parliament again in parliamentary group size after the 2025 federal election.
Wissler made similar comments.
Reichinnek and Pellmann assured that they were pulling together.
“We don’t have that many chances and we can only do it together,” said Pellmann.
He wants to build bridges.
Successor to Bartsch
The Left is in crisis after Sahra Wagenknecht's wing split off.
In surveys nationwide it currently only reaches three to four percent.
The long-time parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch had announced that he would be withdrawing from the front row after decades in high party positions.
MP Clara Bünger and Left Federal Managing Director Ates Gürpinar also applied to be his successor.
Gürpinar withdrew during the proceedings on Monday.
Bünger lost in two rounds of voting to both Reichinnek and Pellmann, 13 to 14 each. The group has 28 members, but MP Petra Pau was unable to take part in the vote due to an injury.
The MP Christian Görke was elected as the first parliamentary manager.
Small group, but still discord
Although the Left group is small, it is divided over the future direction.
There is also traditionally a dispute between the left in the Bundestag and the party leadership.
All of this was also reflected in the vote.
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Reichinnek and Pellmann were defeated in the race for party leadership against Wissler and Schirdewan in 2022.
Now they competed as a duo and formulated their top themes in a thesis paper: redistribution, “good work”, peace.
Bünger and Gürpinar are closer to the party leadership, but did not get a chance.
Apart from the internal wrangling, the new group chairmen are hardly known nationwide.
Reichinnek (35) comes from Saxony-Anhalt and entered the Bundestag in 2021 via the Lower Saxony state list.
She studied Middle Eastern studies and said she was in Cairo during the Arab Spring in 2010 and 2011.
She taught German in a facility for unaccompanied minor refugees.
In the Bundestag she was responsible for children, youth, family and women's policy.
Tomatoes and jam as small gifts
Sören Pellmann (47) comes from Leipzig and studied law and education for the disabled.
Before his time in the Bundestag, he was a primary school teacher.
According to his own statements, he likes to give away tomato plants or jam with fruit from his own garden at party stands.
He sees himself as a people-oriented concerner and was the Left Party's representative for the East at the time.
Pellmann also has a special role: he defended his direct mandate in 2021, as did Gregor Gysi and Gesine Lötzsch.
All three secured the Left's entry into the Bundestag in 2021 with party strength, even though it only received 4.9 percent of the second votes.
The left-wing faction dissolved in December after Wagenknecht and nine other MPs left the party.
As the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, they now form their own group in the Bundestag with ten members.
Wagenknecht is the chairwoman.
dpa