Left in North Rhine-Westphalia: Exclusion proceedings against Wagenknecht start

The party exclusion procedure requested by internal party critics against the left-wing politician and North Rhine-Westphalian top candidate for the federal election, Sahra Wagenknecht, gets underway.

The two existing motions to expel Wagenknecht from the party would be bundled in one proceeding.

"The procedure is being opened," said the state arbitration commission of the North Rhine-Westphalia Left in a statement on Monday after a consultation on the weekend on the further procedure.

According to the information provided by the State Arbitration Commission, the procedure will be carried out as a written procedure.

However, the Commission expressly reserves the right to “switch to the procedure with an oral hearing at a later point in time if this proves to be necessary for clarification of the facts or for legal reasons”.

Wagenknecht speaks of "lifestyle leftists"

Wagenknecht is a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Association of the Left. With her book “The Self-Righteous”, Wagenknecht recently came under massive criticism from within its own ranks. In it, she accuses left-wing parties of having lost sight of social issues and alienating traditional voters with low incomes with gender, climate or organic food debates. She speaks of “lifestyle leftists”, as she wrote in a guest post for the FAS. The criticism had already overshadowed Wagenknecht's nomination as the top candidate of the NRW left for the Bundestag in mid-April: She had to face a fight vote for first place against two opposing candidates and received 61 percent.

The chairman and top candidate of the left, Janine Wissler, is against the expulsion of the former parliamentary group leader Wagenknecht. "I do not think it is fundamentally right to clarify intra-party differences through exclusion procedures," she said in a Phoenix interview the week before last. "Sahra Wagenknecht is the top candidate in North Rhine-Westphalia, and I am confident that this application for exclusion will not be approved". The NRW state executive had previously stated that it was behind Wagenknecht.