The faction of leftthe German Left, has since been dissolved 6th of December. A step she is forced to take after the separation she encouraged Sahra Wagenknecht who announced the founding of a new party, which, if successful, will have 10 members of the Bundestag. According to the regulations of the German Bundestag, a group can only consist of forces that do not compete with each other – this is the case, for example, with the Christian Democratic formations CDU and CSU – and must be composed of a number of representatives who represent at least 5 percent of the assembly. In the current Bundestag the threshold is 37 people and the left will drop to 28. It should be noted that in German we actually talk about the dissolution of the “parliamentary groupThe Bundestag system also allows for a lighter structure, known as a “group”. The last precedent of this kind that we remember dates back to the 1960s, when the German party – conservative – lost a number of MPs to the CDU-CSU. Left was created in 2007 from the merger of the Party of the Left (PDS) and the Party of Labor and Social Justice – Die Wahlalternative (Wasg).
The split in the German Left Party comes at a time severe crisis of consensus and it is consumed on topics that were or still are controversial for the entire European left, such as the war in Ukraine, the management of migration flows and even before that, the vaccination campaigns during the Covid period. Wagenkencht was against compulsory vaccination (while the party had taken critical positions during the pandemic, but not a strong rejection of the then Health Minister’s regulations). Jens Spahn). He recently blamed the US more than Putin regarding the Ukraine crisis, and the party believed it was undeniable that Russia had invaded a sovereign country. Wagenknecht is passionate, but she has also witnessed the decline of the left’s consensus and understands that what is important is at stake uncontrolled immigration (a thorn in the side of the entire German left, including the ruling Social Democrats of Olaf Scholz). And with his new party he wants to take the same place as the right Alternatives for Germanywhich automatically becomes incompatible with the left, which has now been put on the list Carola Rackete, the commander of the Sea Watch boats famous in Italy. Various passages that made it clear that Wagenknecht was reserved about party discipline. Now he has founded a club that bears his name, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance.
Born in Thuringia, eastern Germany, 53, the daughter of an Iranian father and a German mother, Wagenknecht first entered the Bundestag in 2009 after spending five years in the European Parliament. From regret about the GDR to hostility towards the course of the left Gregor Gysi and then Janine Wissler And Martin ShirdewanWagenknecht had already attempted an “autonomous” action in 2018 by founding the “Rialzarsi” movement, which failed in the bud. Then in June 2021 he published the manifesto book “I presuntuosi – Il mio counterprogramma” (the original German title was “The Self-Righteous”) to the effect that the wing of the progressive left demanded his exclusion, which the management was aware of polarized figure – rejected. The rut has inexorably widened because of his proximity to anti-vaccination activists and Putin and his tongue-in-cheek attitude toward the populist right. The break came with the feminist in February Alice Schwarzer wrote a “Manifesto for Peaceand was one of the first signatories Tino Chrupalla, chairman of the AfD. Not only that: the chairman of the right-wing party in Thuringia Björn Höcke He also asked her to join their party. In response to criticism from the Left leadership group, Wagenknecht replied that they had “that sad decline of what once was Peace Party“. In March she openly declared that she did not want to run for the Left again: the differences between her and the management were “so great that she could not imagine how they could be reconciled.” On January 27, 2010, she had already received applause from the neo-Nazis of the NPD because she did not stand to applaud the former President of Israel. Shimon PeresNobel Peace Prize winner in 1994, in his eyes a statesman who had fought wars.
The final divorce – after further requests for expulsion from the party – took place on October 23rd, when Wagenknecht herself made it public that she had decided to give up the Left, but not her seat in parliament (and the daily allowance). When she leaves the party, the parliamentarian is followed by other party members, such as the former Bavarian trade unionist Klaus Ernst and the former group leader Amira Mohamed wing. It still is Andrei Hunkoin the Bundestag from the same year as Wagenknecht, who signed a declaration with her and Ernst in which the USA demanded shared responsibility for the war in Ukraine.
In the long term, the party’s future will depend on how it repositions itself; whether there will be a return to the origins of the “Voice of the East”, even with non-local personalities such as: Janine Wissler or will he find another course? On November 5th, the national and regional party leaders, together with the parliamentary group leaders, presented a Relaunch projectBut which path will actually be taken will probably be decided at the advertising congress Augusta from November 17th to 19th and in the tones of Demonstration for peace and against rearmament – la Germany announced that doubling of aid to Ukraine in 2024 to 8 billion – on the 25th of this month. It is estimated that if the party of Sahra Wagenknechtwill also be able to achieve more consensus in the conservative wing and form a Biggest problem for the AfDand not for a new left freed from internal disputes.