The former co-founder and chairman of the Left Party has left the party.
(Photo: dpa)
Saarbrucken The co-founder and former chairman of the Left Party, Oskar Lafontaine, has left the party. The 78-year-old announced this on Thursday in Saarbrücken. “I wanted there to be a left-wing alternative to the politics of social insecurity and inequality on the political spectrum, which is why I co-founded Die Linke. Today’s left has given up that claim,” Lafontaine said in a statement.
In March 1999, in a dispute with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Lafontaine resigned as chairman of the SPD and in 2005, after leaving the SPD, united the West German electoral alternative Work and Social Justice (WASG) with the East German PDS to form the Left Party. With his exit from the party, a party exclusion procedure against Lafontaine at the Left Party has been settled.
The Saarlander has also just ended his political career. With the state elections in Saarland on March 27, he is turning his back after more than 50 years of active politics.
Most recently, he had led the left-wing faction in the Saarland state parliament since 2009. On Wednesday he was said goodbye in his last session of the state parliament with plenty of words of thanks.
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“Oskar”, as he is called in Saarland, was almost everything you can become in a political life in Germany: Mayor of Saarbrücken, SPD state chairman, Prime Minister of Saarland (1985-1998), SPD candidate for chancellor (1990), SPD -Federal Chairman, Federal Minister of Finance, co-founder of the Left Party and its party and parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag.
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