Lafontaine for new party
Wissler downplays the number of Wagenknecht supporters
September 11, 2023, 7:10 a.m
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The split in the left through the founding of a party under Sahra Wagenknecht is getting closer and closer. However, Left Party leader Wissler appears calm on the outside. The project doesn’t have many supporters, she claims. Oskar Lafontaine sees it differently, saying there is a gap in the party system.
Left co-chair Janine Wissler sees no rift across her party because of speculation about a possible new party being founded by Sahra Wagenknecht. “There is a small part that is now thinking about running for a competitive party,” Wissler told the digital media company Table.Media. She thinks that’s a mistake. But the left has a stable foundation at the grassroots “and a program that is regularly praised by associations and unions.”
Left-wing politician Wagenknecht has been flirting with founding a new party for a long time. “The decision will be made by the end of the year,” the Bundestag member told the “Bild” newspaper at the weekend.
Wissler said: “If someone uses their special access to the public to represent completely different positions, then that is a problem.” Everyone has the right to found their own party, but not with mandates won in the name of the left.
Oskar Lafontaine is part of the small group mentioned by Wissler who is thinking about founding a new party. The former Left Party leader and Wagenknecht’s husband expressly supports the process. “Of course I support a party that advocates for social justice and peace. Unfortunately, this party does not exist at the moment,” said Lafontaine.
Lafontaine: AfD wants to dismantle the welfare state
“There is a real gap in the German party system,” said Lafontaine in Merzig in Saarland. This means that employees or people with low incomes and low pensions “feel more and more represented by the AfD”. But the AfD is “not a party for the common people because it has neoliberal economic ideas, such as dismantling the welfare state.”
Lafontaine left the Left Party, which he once co-founded, in March 2022 in disappointment. It has “unfortunately developed into a party that is trying to imitate the Greens,” he said.
Will there soon be a new left party? “We’ll see.” He added: “I’m (mentally) in a left-wing people’s party that just doesn’t have an organization at the moment – Willy Brandt’s social democracy.” This was defined by social justice as well as peace and détente policies. “But this party no longer exists today.”