Namesake as a driving force?
Wagenknecht’s party is running in the European elections
December 16, 2023, 2:31 p.m
Experts predict that the “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance” has great potential, especially in the East. It is still unclear whether it will compete there in next year’s state elections. However, the alliance wants to face the European elections in 2024. The candidates for the list places are still being sought.
The future party led by Sahra Wagenknecht is expected to run for the European elections in June 2024 with 20 candidates. The list of candidates should be voted on at the founding party conference on January 27th in Berlin, said the chairwoman of the “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” (BSW) association, Amira Mohamed Ali, to the editorial network Germany.
All places on the list would probably be filled by external candidates or those who have just become party members, said the former Left parliamentary group leader. The nine-member group of representatives around Wagenknecht will probably remain in the Bundestag.
However, this is not entirely certain. When asked whether Sahra Wagenknecht would run as a driving force in the European elections, BSW boss Mohamed Ali said: “That is still open and will be clarified by the party conference at the latest.” It remains unclear whether the new party will also stand for vote in the upcoming state elections in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia in 2024.
“More conservative”
According to Mohamed Ali, the party will pursue a left-wing course in social policy as a “representative of the interests of workers” and “small and medium-sized companies”.
She added: “When it comes to socio-political issues, for example the self-determination law introduced by the traffic light, where every person can arbitrarily determine whether they are male, female or diverse, regardless of their innate gender characteristics, then we tend to be conservative .”
Party gets a different name
Wagenknecht himself made it clear on Friday on the TV channel Phoenix that the party would only bear its name until the next federal election. “After this, my name will no longer be necessary,” she said. In the initial phase the aim is to increase recognition value. Wagenknecht added: “I don’t need it for my ego that a party is named after me.”
Former Bundestag parliamentary group leader Sahra Wagenknecht left the Left in October with Mohamed Ali and eight other MPs and announced the founding of her own party in January. The “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” association already exists, which collects donations and prepares the organization.
Wagenknecht confirmed in a newspaper interview that she would like to co-govern with her party in the federal government. “Whether we enter a government depends on the content,” she said. Wagenknecht named the SPD and the Left Party as possible coalition partners. Wagenknecht ruled out alliances with the Greens and AfD. Regarding the CDU, she said: We could have formed a coalition with the former Social Affairs Minister “Norbert Blüm.”
The left-wing faction has now dissolved itself after Sahra Wagenknecht and her colleagues left the party – 18 years after it was founded in September 2005.