According to a media report, BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht wants to get involved in possible coalition negotiations in Erfurt or Dresden: the 55-year-old announced in an interview with “Der Spiegel” that she would be at the table after the elections. “When negotiations take place in Saxony and Thuringia, we will hold these talks in close coordination with our top candidates, and of course I will also be personally involved,” she said.
SPD resists external announcements
Ten days before the state elections in the two eastern German states, this is fueling the discussion about possible government constellations and the intentions of the BSW. “The BSW can of course decide for itself who it brings along,” Thuringia’s SPD lead candidate Georg Maier told the German Press Agency.
However, he added that announcements from outside were not needed. “That is not possible. Nor will we accept conditions being imposed here that we in Thuringia cannot decide. That has no place in a coalition agreement,” said Maier.
Wagenknecht had made the stance of other parties on German policy towards Ukraine a condition for possible coalition agreements after the state elections. This has been criticized in part as blackmail.
Wagenknecht: “get involved personally”
Thuringia’s CDU top candidate Mario Voigt reiterated his line on the coalition issue: “As long as Sahra Wagenknecht is making the announcements for Thuringia from Saarland, we have no basis for talks with the BSW.”
Wagenknecht responded to X with the words: “BSW Thuringia doesn’t get any announcements from Saarland, I always like coming to Erfurt, Thuringia is my home, I grew up here, I have family here, I always like being here.” Wagenknecht was born in Jena, spent part of her childhood in the region and also studied there. An election campaign appearance is planned for Monday in the city of her birth.
Question marks over the will to govern
Wagenknecht recently reiterated her conditions for possible coalitions. She told dpa that the majority of citizens reject the stationing of US missiles in Germany. “We are simply demanding that the state government represents what two thirds of the people want.” It is the essence of democracy that the majority will of the people should also prevail in politics. “The day-long Punch and Judy show by the other parties that we would formulate intolerable conditions should therefore be over.”
Maier pointed out that it is not unusual to exclude issues that are not decided at state level from coalition agreements. “Ms. Wagenknecht has no interest in Thuringia. She only has her own interests in mind and they are naturally focused on the federal election,” said Maier. He questioned whether Wagenknecht even wants her party to participate in state governments in Saxony or Thuringia. “You can’t interpret that any other way from my point of view,” he said. If she wanted to, she would hold back, he argued.
Several Thuringian district councillors also spoke out. “But anyone who makes people believe in a state election campaign that this election will decide the issues of war and peace is deceiving the voters,” 17 state councillors and mayors said in a statement. They expect answers to Thuringia’s problems.
CDU sees talent for destruction
It was not only in Thuringia that there was criticism of Wagenknecht’s announcements with regard to possible government formations. “The days of the Politburo are over, when someone in Berlin could decide what happens on the ground”, said Saxony’s Minister President Michael Kretschmer (CDU). Wagenknecht has “a rare talent (…) for destroying things. She has never really succeeded in building anything. And it’s the same this time.”
He criticized interventions, strange coupling deals and red lines drawn by Wagenknecht. “This humiliation of our own members on the ground is really terrible. But it’s just what we’ve known from her for many years.”
The CDU’s top candidate for the state elections in Brandenburg on September 22, Jan Redmann, said: “It’s unclear to me whether the BSW seriously wants to govern in the states at all.” If that were the case, the BSW would have to get involved in state political discussions. However, he had “the impression that Sahra Wagenknecht is building up positions at federal level in order to prevent coalitions in the federal states. That her goal is therefore not at all that serious explorations can take place in the federal states.”
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