“Snout full” is quite an expletive in political Berlin. This is often not heard, at least not from the podium at the federal press conference. But it’s also not often that a party crashes like the Left Party in Saarland. It lost 10.3 percentage points, landing at 2.6 percent according to the preliminary official final result.
The shock was noticeable to the two party leaders on Monday. “I would now say that the degree of ‘snout full’ is relatively high for both of us,” said Susanne Hennig-Wellsow. But she still doesn’t want to throw it down. A good year ago she was elected party leader together with Janine Wissler. Hennig-Wellsow said they had decided to get the Left Party developing further. “We’re right in the middle of it now.”
Cross shots in the Russia question
Wissler spoke of a “disastrous result” and a “bitter evening”. Hesse, Wissler’s political homeland, is now the only non-city state in West Germany that has a left-wing faction in the state parliament. According to Wissler, the Saarland left was divided, and that completely overshadowed the program. “A party of solidarity is only taken seriously if it shows solidarity with each other and with each other,” said Wissler.
Ten days before the state elections, Oskar Lafontaine, the former leader of the Left Party and one of the country’s best-known politicians, had left the party. In his statement, he accused the comrades of no longer focusing on the interests of workers and pensioners. In doing so, he forestalled an exclusion process because he had called in the fall not to vote for the party.
Wissler tried to make it clear on Monday that the left had the “social question” in mind. Responding to the accusation that the left was too concerned with questions of identity politics, she countered that the fight for social justice and that for the rights of minorities were inextricably linked.
“We are trying hard to reach unity”
However, the Saarland is not the only reason why the party leaders feel “fed up”. There is also controversy at the federal level. In the case of the Russia question in particular, there are always cross-shots. After the attack on Ukraine, the party and parliamentary group leaders had condemned the “war of aggression contrary to international law”. A few days ago, however, the party’s council of elders raised the question of whether the war was an “internal civil war between the forces in the new eastern states and fascist elements in western Ukraine”. A group of MPs led by Sahra Wagenknecht, Lafontaine’s wife, gave the West some responsibility for the escalation.
“We are trying hard to achieve unity despite all the differences,” said Hennig-Wellsow. Sahra Wagenknecht is “a simple member of the group”. “We determine the position of the left together, Wagenknecht speaks for itself”. Hennig-Wellsow suggested inviting her less on talk shows.
The AfD, which was the only one of the smaller parties to win seats in the new Saarland state parliament, was dissatisfied with its result on Monday. In Berlin, however, it was left to their Saarland state chairman, Christian Wirth, to announce this assessment. The AfD federal chairman Tino Chrupalla, who wanted to appear together with Wirth in front of Berlin journalists, was not admitted to the federal press conference because he could not provide proof of the necessary 2-G corona status.
Wirth, on the other hand, admitted that his party had also deterred voters with internal disputes; the classification of the AfD as a suspected case by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution also had a negative impact.
#Disappointment #state #election #feeling #sick