An the election results of more than 90 percent, which their predecessors Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck had achieved in 2019, Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour did not come close. Nevertheless, the vote of the delegates at the digital party conference of the Greens at the weekend was very clear: Lang and Nouripour are the new party leaders of the Greens. The party left Lang, which could only be connected online due to a corona infection, received 75 percent of the votes. She had no opponent. Despite two opposing candidates, the Realo Nouripour accounted for 82.5 percent. Emily Büning, also of the party left, was elected political director, receiving more than 88 percent of the votes.
In her application speech, Lang campaigned for a determined fight against the climate crisis. “There’s no waiting,” she said. “We cannot choose the reality, we can only accept it and act accordingly.” It is important that climate protection and social issues are thought of together. “There can be no justice without climate protection,” said Lang, emphasizing that socially disadvantaged people were particularly hard hit by the changes.
“Government is not punishment”
Much like Robert Habeck in his speech the day before, Lang defended the value of the compromise. “Government is not a punishment, but a huge opportunity.” Yes, that will be tough. Yes, it would probably also be easier to sit on the edge with the white vest? But that didn’t help anyone, according to Lang. “We make politics to concretely improve life.” She affirmed that she was willing to endure conflicts.
Especially under Realos there had also been criticism of Lang. According to reports, they were actively promoted again at a meeting of this party wing. Lang not only had to justify herself because she received a corona bonus of 1,500 euros as part of the board in 2020, which is why the public prosecutor is now investigating. There was also trouble because at the end of November she did not want to support the nomination of Cem Özdemir as minister in the party executive and instead wanted to force the party left Anton Hofreiter to become part of the cabinet.
The foreign politician Omid Nouripour, who won a direct mandate in Frankfurt in the general election, enjoys the backing of large parts of the party, as his good election results show. When he was first elected party leader in January 2018, Habeck got a similar result. In his speech, Nouripour described himself as a “party person”. He praised the work of Baerbock and Habeck and promised to do everything to ensure that the Greens played their part again in the “K question” in the next federal election. “We are the indomitable,” he said of his party.
With Nouripour at the top, the Greens are getting a little closer to their claim for more diversity in their own ranks. The outgoing board had no member with a migration background. In his speech, Nouripour talked about a situation during the election campaign: Two young people noticed that he was an elected official and expressed surprise that he looked like them. Applause erupted in the Berlin Velodrom as he promised there would be a loud and boisterous federal delegates’ conference next fall.