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For the first time, Hamburg's left are entering the federal election campaign with a woman at the helm.

A state representative assembly elected the Bundestag member and Hamburg party chairman Zaklin Nastic on Friday evening in the Wilhelmsburg community center with 58 of 94 valid votes at number one on the state list.

This corresponds to an approval rate of only 61.7 percent.

35 delegates abstained.

Her opponent Artur Leier received only one vote.

The left lifted the member of parliament Deniz Celik to the equally promising second place on the list.

The 42-year-old received 64 out of 96 valid votes without an opponent, which corresponds to an approval of 66.6 percent.

Deniz Celik (Die Linke) hopes for a sufficiently good election result in second place on the electoral list

Source: dpa

Nastic was a member of the Eimsbüttel district assembly from 2011 to 2017, changed to the Hamburg parliament in August 2017 and moved into the Bundestag three months later in October.

There she acts in the parliamentary group as a spokesperson for human rights.

The 41-year-old has also been a member of the federal executive committee of the Left since 2018.

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After her election, she said: “Let's fight together to achieve double-digit numbers in the federal government as well.” In the 2017 federal election, the left had 9.2 percent nationwide, and 12.2 percent in Hamburg.

The Hamburg Left are currently represented by two members of the Bundestag.

Next to her is the budget expert Fabio de Masi, who for private reasons no longer tries to secure a mandate and who recently criticized the economic literacy of the left in a letter.

Before him, Norman Paech and Jan van Aken were the top candidates in the Bundestag for the Hamburg Left.

"Need a strong welfare state"

Nastic, born in Poland and since 1990 in Germany and Hamburg, said she was an anti-fascist by nature with the two homes of Rosa Luxenburg and Karl Liebknecht.

"We need a strong welfare state to protect people," said Nastic.

That is why she is clearly against the debt brake and in favor of a property levy.

"The crisis profiteers (...) must be asked to pay."

With a view to the corona pandemic, she emphasized: "Vaccines and their patents belong in public companies." It could not be that the state only put tens of millions of euros in tax money into the vaccine company Biontech / Pfizer, "so that afterwards shareholders can make their profits beat".