Until Katja Wolf joined, hardly any East German politicians had joined the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). This would be important for the state elections there.
Erfurt – At the beginning of January, the former left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht founded her new party, which she presides with her name. At its party conference (January 27th), the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) put itself forward as a potential governing party for the upcoming state elections, which start on September 1st in Saxony and Thuringia and will also be held in Brandenburg on September 22nd.
This week the BSW once again received some media attention. At the New Year's reception in the city of Eisenach on Monday, Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (The left) Eisenach's mayor Katja Wolf publicly suggested that he be part of his top team for the state election campaign. He also spoke of a potential ministerial position for Wolf – but it remained unclear exactly what position Ramelow meant by this. “I regret that you are leaving the city, I understand that you are going your own way now. If you want, you can come to my cabinet,” Ramelow said there.
Wolf, who wants to switch from the Left to the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), rejected the public offer from the Prime Minister of Thuringia the following Tuesday. Although Wolf said German press agency (dpa) on Tuesday that she honored the Prime Minister's “surprising offer”. At the same time, she also made it clear that she would not accept it.
Katja Wolf joins the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) – “new democratic offer”
Wolf now sees Ramelow's offer as a “reference to 25 years of trusting cooperation,” as she now says n-tv is quoted. “Bodo Ramelow and I both see the danger that no stable majorities will be achieved after the state elections or that a right-wing extremist party could come to government,” said Wolf.
To do this, it is necessary to make a “new democratic offer”. “That’s why, as announced, I will join the BSW and fight for this new beginning,” emphasized Eisenach’s mayor.
But what could this new beginning look like for Sahra Wagenknecht's young party? And where does the BSW actually stand one month after it was founded?
The hoped-for support from politicians on the left for the BSW has so far failed to materialize
Some well-known politicians have already joined the alliance. They include the former Left chairman Oskar Lafontaine, whom Wagenknecht married in 2014. “Of course I am a member of the BSW,” said Lafontaine, who comes from Saarland, to the Saarbrücken newspaper. In addition to Lafontaine, who also acted as spokesman at the BSW party conference at the end of January, Amira Mohamed Ali and Fabio De Masi, the top candidate for the European elections, also joined the BSW.
However, the large increase in personnel that was possibly hoped for due to the migration of left-wing politicians to the BSW has so far failed to materialize Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports. With the exception of a few local politicians and now also Katja Wolf, hardly any left-wingers from East Germany joined the BSW.
When rumors spread about Sara Wagenknecht founding an independent party, all of Saxony's federal and state parliament members signed a declaration that they did not want to follow Wage
nknecht's new alliance under any circumstances. “We stick together and stand together for a more social and fair country,” it said.
State elections 2024 in Thuringia – Katja Wolf is a candidate for the position of top candidate
Because Sahra Wagenknecht wants to prepare for the 2025 federal elections, she will not run in the state elections in Thuringia. However, for the state election campaign, locally or regionally known politicians are likely to be important identification figures for the potential electorate. This is also why the transition of Erfurt's mayor Katja Wolf, who is herself a native of Erfurt, is so important for the BSW at this time.
It is not for nothing that Wolf is likely to be nominated as the top candidate for the state elections on September 1st in the Thuringian regional association of the BSW, which has yet to be founded, reports FAZ.
After she left the left-wing parliamentary group in the fall, Wagenknecht was initially only followed by West German MPs to the BSW. The former left-wing member of the Bundestag had expressed her wish at the time, including with the upcoming ones State elections in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia to want to run with their own party. At the same time, she also emphasized the need for sustainable structures, such as regional associations with reliable staff.
In Saxony, Wagenknecht's BSW hardly receives any support from younger people
The Left regional association in Saxony, with 7,000 members the largest regional association in East Germany, has also reacted skeptically or negatively to Sahra Wagenknecht's new alliance. So far, no high-ranking left-wing member in Saxony has joined the BSW.
Only in the summer did the Saxon members of the federal and state parliaments as well as the European Parliament declare their loyalty to the left in a letter. “With its pluralism and our different origins,” the party continues to be its political home, he quoted Editorial Network Germany (RND) from the letter from the MPs. Although your own party is not perfect, neither are other parties.
In Saxony, Werdau City Councilor Sabine Zimmermann, a former left-wing member of the Bundestag, is supposed to ensure that an electorate is built up in the Free State. The 63-year-old has already announced that she wants to run in the Saxon local elections on June 9th this year. From the Werdau city council in southwest Saxony, three left-wing city councilors followed Zimmermann to the BSW. And in Zwickau, not far away, four of the seven left-wing representatives joined the BSW, creating the first municipal group of the BSW in the Zwickau region.
What is the approval for the BSW in Saxony so far?
Currently, 8 percent of voters in Saxony would vote for the BSW, according to a representative survey by Infratest Dimap on behalf of the at the end of January (January 25, 2024). MDR emerged. Presumably also due to dissatisfaction with the current Saxon state government. According to the survey, the BSW is behind the AfD and the CDU making it the current third strongest force in Saxony.
However, Wagenknecht's new alliance does not receive the necessary support among young voters in Saxony. This could be mainly due to the fact that the BSW chairwoman has repeatedly spoken out in favor of significantly limiting immigration in asylum policy.
Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht is considering the first potential coalition variants
With the exception of Wolf, Mayor of Eisenach, only a few local politicians in Thuringia have joined the BSW. In mid-January (January 17, 2024) the institute had INSA published an election survey for the Thuringian
state elections. Accordingly, the BSW comes in at 17 percent, putting it in third place in the survey behind the AfD (31 percent) and the CDU (20 percent), but ahead of the Left (15 percent).
In view of these prospects, it becomes clear once again why Bodo Ramelow would have liked to have Eisenach's mayor, Wolf, in his top team for the Thuringian state elections. It is clear that Wolf will not be a left-wing politician and a Thuringian minister. It remains to be seen whether she will make it into office for the BSW in September if she is actually nominated as the BSW's top candidate.
The BSW could be decisive for the formation of a government in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in September, even if the AfD's current highs there make it questionable whether a majority government would then even be possible. However, the BSW could benefit other parties as a possible coalition partner in order to prevent the AfD from governing. The Wagenknecht party BSW has so far only ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD or the Greens. (Fabian Hartmann)
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