MIn the middle of the deep crisis of the left, Dietmar Bartsch, who has been the head of the Bundestag faction for many years, is stepping down. The sixty-five-year-old explained in a letter to the parliamentary group on Wednesday that the German Press Agency has received. Bartsch emphasized that he made the decision a long time ago. A few days ago, his co-chairman Amira Mohamed Ali announced her departure. The background is the dispute over the direction of MP Sahra Wagenknecht.
Wagenknecht does not support the political line of the federal chairmen Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan. After Bartsch’s decision, they expressed regret about his withdrawal in a statement and described him as an “ally” in the “struggle for a strong and united left”.
Wagenknecht wants to decide by the end of the year whether to found her own party. If that happens, the left and its parliamentary group are threatened with a split. It is expected that several of the 39 MPs would then leave the Left Party along with Wagenknecht. With fewer than 37 seats, faction status would be lost and with it money, posts and influence for the small opposition party.
Who could follow Bartsch is open
Bartsch did not justify his planned withdrawal with the current crisis, but wrote to the MPs: “My decision to give up the chairmanship of the parliamentary group after eight years, in which I led the parliamentary group first with Sahra Wagenknecht and then with Amira Mohamed Ali, is a long time ago fallen in the last federal election. My family and closest political friends knew about this decision. Yes, in the past few days and weeks, many have strongly urged me to run again in this difficult situation for the party. Ultimately, I stuck to my decision.”
Bartsch has been co-chair of the left parliamentary group since 2015, first with Wagenknecht and most recently with Mohamed Ali. She had justified her withdrawal by protesting against the way the party leadership dealt with Wagenknecht. Bartsch initially left his future open. Now he too has made up his mind. Who could follow the two, is open.
With Bartsch, one of the most prominent leftists is retiring from the front row. He comes from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and has held high party offices for decades. For a long time he was the national director of the predecessor party PDS and the newly founded Left Party in 2007. In 2009 he managed the federal election campaign. In 2012 he ran for party leader, but failed to get the necessary majority. In 2017, Bartsch was the top candidate for the federal election alongside Wagenknecht, and in 2021 he ran with party leader Wissler.
What is modern left politics?
In his letter to the MPs, he appealed to his party: “Many are currently babbling about the end of the left. You will be wrong again when the values we fight for in society, such as humanity, solidarity, cordiality and lots of smiles, determine our actions again and at the same time we draw the necessary conclusions from the history of left-wing parties.”
Bartsch has repeatedly warned of the dangers of a split in the left and has criticized Wagenknecht’s flirtation with founding a party. When Wissler and Schirdewan, together with the rest of the party executive, resigned from Wagenknecht in June, Bartsch showed support for the party leadership.
All in all, the dispute on the left is not just about Wagenknecht as a person, but about the question of what modern left-wing politics is. The party leadership courts the climate movement and wants radical climate protection combined with social balance. Wagenknecht and their supporters warn against too great a burden from climate protection. They want to limit migration and continue cheap energy imports from Russia despite the Ukraine war.
At the most recent federal party conference of the left in 2022, Wagenknecht’s supporters could not prevail. Wissler and Schirdewan, on the other hand, secured the support of a majority of the delegates.
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