Left board member Dietmar Bartsch leaves his post

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Dietmar Bartsch: “Decision made”

Photo: Mike Schmidt / IMAGO

The left-wing politician Dietmar Bartsch is withdrawing from the chairmanship of his party's new group in the Bundestag. "I will no longer stand for office at the parliamentary group meeting on February 19th and 20th," the 65-year-old told the German Press Agency in Berlin on Sunday. This means that the Left is losing one of its most well-known politicians in a prominent leadership position.

Bartsch said that with this step he was completing the withdrawal that he had already announced in August - at that time as chairman of the now dissolved left-wing faction in the Bundestag. At the time, he said that the decision to relinquish the parliamentary group chairmanship "was made long before the last federal election."

However, under the impression of the impending break with the former parliamentary group leader Sahra Wagenknecht, Bartsch changed his mind in October and initially remained at the top of the parliamentary group. When it dissolved due to the party's split, he became chairman of the new group with 28 left-wing MPs. This was recognized by the Bundestag on Friday. Now Bartsch is actually withdrawing from the front row.

“Now there will be a new leadership, which I will of course support to the best of my ability,” said Bartsch. He did not say which person or people should head the new group. There will certainly be more discussions about this in the 14 days until the exam, he said.

Party in crisis

The left has been in a deep crisis for years. In the 2021 federal election, it only received 4.9 percent of the votes and only got into parliament with party strength through three direct mandates. Since then, it has mostly had very poor results in state elections. In October, Wagenknecht and her supporters split off and founded the new Sahra Wagenknecht alliance. In recent nationwide surveys, the BSW was at six to seven percent, while the Left was only at three to four percent.

Bartsch has held high party positions for decades. For a long time he was federal manager of the predecessor party PDS and then also of the Left Party, which was newly founded in 2007. In 2017, Bartsch was the top candidate alongside Wagenknecht in the federal election, and in 2021 he ran with party leader Janine Wissler.

mas/dpa