Janine Wissler wants to remain chairwoman of the Left Party. With a renewed candidacy at the party conference at the end of June, she wanted to contribute to the renewal of the left, Wissler told the German Press Agency on Saturday. The “Tagesschau” had previously reported on the planned return of the left boss.
“I’m very happy to be party leader and I still have a lot planned,” Wissler told the dpa. There is “both the potential and the need for a left-wing party,” she emphasized. “We have it in our own hands and I would like to make my contribution with the renewed candidacy.” At the end of June the entire party leadership is to be re-elected at a federal party conference in Erfurt.
The decision had been in question, especially after the difficult electoral defeats of the left in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia. The resignation of Wissler’s co-leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow a few weeks ago and allegations of sexual assault within the party had recently plunged the left into a deep crisis.
Despite the crisis, Wissler sees opportunities in her party to achieve good results in elections again in the future. “The situation is serious, but not hopeless. We have it in our own hands,” said Wissler on Saturday at a state party conference of the left in Hanover. Wissler said there was potential for majorities for left-wing politics. The left is not stuck in the hole of five percent or below. To do this, she must emphasize her topic of social justice.
Most recently, the left failed to make it into the parliaments in the three state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, and in the federal elections last autumn they received 4.9 percent of the second votes. In Lower Saxony, too, the left is currently not represented in the state parliament, having failed at the five percent hurdle in 2017.
After Hennig-Wellsow’s resignation, Wissler initially stated that she wanted to continue to run her party alone in the future. It remained unclear, however, whether she would also run for the presidency again.
