Thuringia’s long-time Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow will no longer seek political office, regardless of the outcome of the formation of a government in Thuringia. This also applies to his party, The Left, which is facing a rebuilding process in Germany after its defeats in the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony.I don’t have to save anything anymore. I don’t have to cling to anything. I have 25 years of hard work behind meRamelow told the German Press Agency in Erfurt.
In the future, he sees his task as a directly elected representative and thus as a representative of his voters in the Thuringian state parliamentary group of the Left Party. Ramelow’s term of office will end when a new Prime Minister is elected.
No obstructionist politics in the opposition
He now wants live constructive oppositionsaid Ramelow. An obstructive, obstructive approach, as the CDU has sometimes done in the past in joint votes with the AfD against his red-red-green minority government, would be wrong. In Thuringian practice, it would mean voting with the AfD.
Ramelow again described the CDU’s firewall resolution’s equation of the AfD and the Left as a serious mistake. “This primarily benefits the AfD and restricts the CDU.” Especially since the resolution concerning the Left was also a reaction by the CDU to the communist platform of Sahra Wagenknecht, who was still a member of the Left at the time and with whose party a coalition was now to be formed. The BSW’s namesake is now generously granting private audiences to CDU grandees from Saxony and Thuringia. “It seems like a paradox to me when the Left is simply not even included in negotiations on an equal footing,” said Ramelow.
CDU state leader Mario Voigt is counting on a Blackberry Coalition with BSW and SPD, which would have 44 of the 88 seats in the state parliament. The Left would be called upon when 45 votes were needed in parliament, said Ramelow. “Then the government must work to build trust. I’m not going to shout about that.”
Ramelow spoke of a “catastrophic defeat” that the Left Party received in the state elections. It slipped from 31 percent in 2019 to 13.1 percent now. (dpa)
