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A politician on the left who is valued far beyond the boundaries of his own party for his expertise in the fields of economics and finance and for his ability to work together - that is quite rare.
This applies to the Hamburg member of the Bundestag Fabio De Masi, although the appreciation outside the left was probably even greater than in his own ranks.
At least that's how De Masi's statement reads, which De Masis published on Wednesday evening and in which he announced that he would not run again for a Bundestag mandate in the autumn.
That he is taking this step is not so surprising - months ago he told WELT that it was “extremely unlikely” that he would aim for a second legislative period.
Even then, the dissatisfaction with the direction of the left sounded through, and he probably lacked appreciation for his work, in which he had recently been heavily involved in clearing up the Wirecard and Cum-Ex scandals.
How little he thinks of the left's knowledge of economic issues becomes unusually clear in his waiver: “Even the best financial policy will not get us any further if I get respect for my work, but the party is weakening due to strategic mistakes and appearance - although many of our demands are extremely popular among the population.
Then our own commitment is no longer in a healthy proportion to what we actually achieve for those millions of people who, unlike big money, have no lobby in parliament, ”he wrote.
His current step also has to do with "that for a long time there was too little staff in our party and our parliamentary group willing to be interested in the economic debates of our time" - De Masi had this point again and again recently suggest that he suffered from the fact that the left had little expertise in economic issues.
He tried to compensate for this through commitment.
In the area of economic and financial policy in particular, it is “much more difficult to be taken seriously as a left opposition party - without any short-term power perspective.
I think I was able to prove that the left also has it in its own hands whether it plays a role in economic debates that are now moving the whole country in view of the Corona crisis. ”Bitter should also be bitter for some of his party friends that he expressly thanks the Greens and the FDP for the good cooperation.
The party leadership was also discussed
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The 40-year-old, who before his time in Berlin was a Member of the European Union for the Hamburg Left, also confirmed in his letter that he had been asked to run for chairmanship.
However, he apparently analyzed that more economically distant candidates would prevail.
In his letter it says about his own candidacy for the party chairmanship: “This requires a common spirit.
Otherwise success is not possible.
In my current phase of life, however, I do not want to spend my energy in practiced rituals and power struggles. ”Too often, the benchmark for a Bundestag mandate is not who reaches people beyond one's own milieu.
"Exciting job"
In the future he wants to spend more time with his family.
He trusts that he will also “pursue an exciting professional activity outside of parliament.” He wants to continue to use his network and his public role “for important issues such as regulating the financial power of the large digital corporations” and to work partly in his second adopted country, South Africa.
The left in Hamburg are currently represented in parliament by two members of the Bundestag; in addition to De Masi, Zaklin Nastíc has also entered the list.
Ambitions for a candidacy are also said of the co-leader of the Hamburg parliament, Cansu Özdemir.