In Thuringia, other members of the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) have announced that they will be leaving the party. The entire executive board and almost the entire state board want to leave the BSW.
The ten members who are leaving the party include the state chairman of the BSW, Gernot Süßmuth. He justified his decision by saying that the BSW in Thuringia could no longer be saved.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Katja Wolf also wants to leave the party. Resigning wasn't easy, said Wolf, emphasizing: "We were and are actually still convinced of the founding consensus of the BSW." But the party's federal executive board has moved away from this founding consensus. And the last few days have made it clear "that there can no longer be a common path." “We are not elected for endless self-preoccupation,” Wolf continued, nor for “constant defensive struggles” or “enduring flirtations with right-wing radicals.”
Leaving a party is not the same as leaving a faction
The BSW state parliamentary group should remain in its current strength of twelve members for the time being, emphasized the group leader Sigrid Hupach. Further action within the group should be discussed in the coming days. What is certain, however, is that the group stands by the joint government coalition with the CDU and SPD.
But BSW MP Anke Wirsing, who is also a member of the parliamentary group in the state parliament, has sharply criticized the move away from the party. She called the announced exit “high treason,” as MDR reports. Wirsing emphasized that she would under no circumstances become a member of a possible new parliamentary group and that she would not "bend politically."
BSW faction shrunk
Two days ago, three BSW MPs announced that they were leaving both the party and the parliamentary group. The MPs Stefan Wogawa, Roberto Kobelt and Dirk Hoffmeister announced that they wanted to form a parliamentary group with a specially founded party called “Your Voice Counts”. This meant that the BSW parliamentary group in the state parliament had shrunk from 15 to 12 members.
The BSW belongs to the so-called blackberry coalition in Thuringia and forms a government alliance with the CDU and SPD. Even with the original strength of the BSW coalition, the coalition did not have its own majority in the state parliament - there was a stalemate with the opposition from the AfD and the Left Party. After the departures from the BSW faction, the three-party alliance is now a real minority government that can theoretically be overruled by the opposition in parliament.
The Left Party in Thuringia therefore sees the existing blackberry alliance as a failure. “As of today, in our view, the government coalition has collapsed,” said the chairman of the party’s state parliamentary group, Christian Schaft. A coalition partner has said goodbye. And the coalition agreement was concluded between parties and not between individuals.
So far, the Left Party has helped the governing coalition gain a majority in the state parliament several times with its votes. Now there must be discussions about how decisions can be made despite a minority government. “You are not a majority procurer,” emphasized Schaft.
The CDU and SPD emphasized unity in the coalition
But despite the crisis in the BSW, all three government partners are trying to exude confidence. CDU Prime Minister Mario Voigt spoke of a “day of clarity”. He looks “with respect” at the move of the future ex-BSW members. It is a commitment to common political work and a common understanding of that political work.
Thuringia's Interior Minister from the SPD, Georg Maier, also commented: It had become "sometimes unbearable how attempts were made from outside" to stop the Thuringian coalition from working, he said. Like Prime Minister Voigt, the SPD state chairman also emphasized: "We have a government mandate and we want to do justice to it." However, the new situation must first be discussed in the SPD committees.
State association against federal executive board
The dispute in the ranks of the BSW has been simmering for weeks. After Prime Minister Voigt had his doctorate revoked as a result of allegations of plagiarism, the federal executive board of the BSW urged that the regional association should withdraw support from the CDU head of government and leave the blackberry coalition.
However, the demand was met with some rejection within the BSW regional association. Most members of the BSW parliamentary group supported the existing government alliance.
Wagenknecht raises allegations against future ex-party members
BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht sharply criticized the party departures in Thuringia. She accused those who decided to turn away from the BSW of wanting to do maximum damage to the party shortly before the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt next Sunday. The aim of the party departures is to prevent the BSW from entering the state parliament in Magdeburg.
BSW General Secretary Oliver Ruhnert described the party departures as completely lacking in solidarity in an interview with the ARD capital studio. But the plans are not surprising. Ruhnert speculated that the special party conference of the Thuringian BSW regional association, which was actually supposed to take place on Sunday, would have gone differently than Deputy Prime Minister Wolf had hoped. In this context, the BSW general secretary rejected Wolf's allegations that the federal BSW was "flirting with right-wing radicals." “We are the BSW, not the AfD,” emphasized Ruhnert.
