The radical left party continues the electoral reverse and displays its divisions.
by
On both sides of the Rhine, the left of the left is in opposite situations. While rebellious France (LFI) has never had so much wind in its sails, Die Linke, who held his congress from June 24 to 26 in Erfurt, in the center of Germany, is going through a crisis that he n ‘is not exaggerated to qualify as existential.
Born in 2007 of the merger between the PDS, heir to the party who ruled the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the Cold War, and the WASG, a heterogeneous alliance of social democrats of the left, neomarxists and alterglobalists From the west of the country, Die Linke has just known the worst electoral year of its history. Since 2021, he has only 39 elected officials in the Bundestag, 30 less than during the previous legislature, which makes it the least numerous group of the Assembly.
At the regional level, the reverse is also linked. In March, Die Linke collected only 2.6 % of the votes (- 10.3 points) in the Saar, stronghold of one of its founders, the former Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine (1998-1999), Himself having torn his membership card ten days before the ballot. In May, the party only obtained 1.7 % in the Schleswig-Holstein (-2.1) and 2.1 % in Rhine-of-Nord-Westphalia (-2.8), below the 5 threshold % to have elected officials.
Moral disappointment
To the electoral defeats are added moral disappointments. In a survey published in mid-April, the weekly Der Spiegel collected testimonies on cases of harassment and sexual assault targeting in particular the ex-companion of one of the two co-presidents of the party, Janine Wissler, herself accused to have sought to suffocate the scandal. Following these revelations, the other co-president, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, resigned, believing that “the way in which sexism affairs is addressed internally says a lot about the gravity of the party’s breaches”.
Saturday, Janine Wissler, 41, was renewed for a second term at the head of the party, but by only 57 % of the delegates, when they had been 84 % to vote for her in February 2021. Sides, the European deputy Martin Schirdewan, 46, will occupy the other place in the leading tandem. “It is urgent to put the question of bread and butter at the heart of our policy,” hammered the latter, for whom Die Linke must refocus his discourse on the theme of purchasing power, first because of the Importance taken by this subject in the context of inflationary thrust, but also to avoid other more delicate politically. Starting with the war in Ukraine.
You have 40.72% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.