2023-08-06 18:20:13
Left faction leader Amira Mohamed Ali
Mohamed Ali, who has led the group together with Dietmar Bartsch since 2019, is considered to be Wagenknecht’s confidante.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin Left parliamentary group leader Amira Mohamed Ali is resigning from her post because of her party’s dealings with Sahra Wagenknecht. “I have decided not to run for the parliamentary group chairmanship of the left in the Bundestag in the upcoming board elections,” says Mohamed Ali in a statement that is available to the German Press Agency. “There are political reasons for this decision.” The final tipping point was the distancing of the party leadership from Wagenknecht at the beginning of June.
This shows the crack in the left more and more clearly. Mohamed Ali, who has led the group together with Dietmar Bartsch since 2019, is considered to be Wagenknecht’s confidante. This has fallen out with the party leadership around the chairmen Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan and is considering founding their own party. Wagenknecht wants to make a decision before the end of the year. Polls suggest a Wagenknecht party’s chances of success.
In her statement, Mohamed Ali gives several reasons for the planned withdrawal from the group leadership, which will be re-elected at the beginning of September. The 43-year-old writes that she is finding it increasingly difficult to represent the course of the party leadership in public. This contradicts their political convictions in many places. Among other things, she criticized the fact that no “fundamental no to the wrong course of the traffic light government” was formulated, for example to climate policy, which puts a financial burden on people. There is also a lack of “a clear yes to a consistent peace policy”.
The party leadership wants to win over disappointed Green voters, she said. But you can’t reach those for whom left-wing politics should be made, not even AfD voters who can still be won back.
“The final tipping point for my decision was the unanimous decision of the party executive of June 10, 2023 and the fact that the large majority of the state executives adopted this decision,” the statement said.
Division is a risk for the left
“It says that Sahra Wagenknecht has no future in the left and should resign along with other MPs. This shows in a hitherto unknown clarity the desire and the goal to force part of the membership out of the party.”
For the parliamentary group, the internal division is a risk. It could lose its status and thus financial resources and influence if more than two MPs switch to a Wagenknecht party and leave the parliamentary group. She left it open how Mohamed Ali would behave. She only wrote: “I will continue to work in the Bundestag for the goals and beliefs that have supported my political work so far.”
Wagenknecht had repeatedly criticized the party leadership and irritated with the possible founding of the party. Wissler and Schirdewan finally took the initiative and enforced the decision against Wagenknecht. In the meantime, they have made another decision that has met with criticism from Wagenknecht supporters: they proposed refugee and climate activist Carola Rackete as the left-wing top candidate for the European elections.
“The proposal by the party executive to proclaim the non-party Carola Rackete as the top candidate for the European elections, bypassing all party committees, further proves the ghost journey of the political leadership of the left,” said Klaus Ernst, member of the Bundestag, also a supporter of Wagenknecht, the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”. Officially, the list for the European elections will only be drawn up at a left-wing party conference in Augsburg in mid-November.
More: Wagenknecht party would have 25 percent in Thuringia
#Left #faction #leader #resigns #dispute #Wagenknecht