Last weekend’s party conference in Bonn, West Germany, was extra special for the Sahara Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW): The party will contest its first federal elections in February, and this was the chance to present its manifesto.
Founded in January 2024, the BSW breezed through the dress rehearsal: In the September elections in the East German states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, the BSW won 12%–16% of the vote, overtaking the socialist Left Party. From which it attracted many of its state and federal lawmakers.
Despite this, Wagenknecht is worried that his namesake party will fail to reach the 5% threshold in early Bundestag elections. This is because only 10 million of Germany’s 59 million eligible voters live in the east, less than a fifth of the electorate. In the West, support for BSW is much lower.
European elections as a benchmark for BSW
This was already evident in the European elections in June 2024, when the BSW received 6.2% of the German vote, and regional differences were very large: in the East, support ranged between just under 13% and just over 16%. , but in the West, BSW received very little support, averaging less than 5%. Only in the small state of Saarland (one million inhabitants) and the city-state of Bremen (580,000 inhabitants) did it exceed this limit.
The BSW is considering similar figures in the upcoming Bundestag elections. According to the latest opinion polls, the BSW has no margin for error: its poll rating is hovering at the 5% mark required for entry into the German parliament.
Sahra Wagenknecht criticizes the media
At the party conference in Bonn, BSW founder Wagenknecht blamed a lack of media coverage for the weak election results: “I think it is quite undemocratic,” he told public broadcaster BR shortly before the conference.
But a look at TV political talk shows on German broadcasters ARD and ZDF paints a different picture: With 12 appearances, Wagenknecht was the most frequently invited politician on these public broadcasters in 2024.
Despite the polls, the BSW leader looked confident and combative in Bonn: he reminded his audience that they were a young party and still had no core constituencies. Many people don’t know yet who they want to vote for, Wagenknecht said. “We are just starting this campaign.” The party platform adopted at the conference will now lay the groundwork.
BSW sees itself as the only peace party
In this newly created manifesto, the BSW describes itself as the only “peace party” in the German Bundestag that is consistent in its opposition to the current buildup of weapons as well as the supply of weapons to war zones.
However, this has long been a core principle of the Socialist Left Party, which Wagenknecht and many of his old supporters have rejected.
The reason for the split was their opposing views on asylum and migration policy. While the Left Party is the only party represented in the Bundestag that opposes the adoption of stricter asylum policies, the BSW demands among other things that asylum procedures be carried out in so-called safe third countries outside the EU and that criminal refugees be deported. Go. ,
Strong words on asylum and migration
In terms of its content and rhetoric, parts of the BSW’s election program resemble those of other parties, including Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party with far-right extremist elements.
The BSW program criticizes the “uncontrolled influx of people” and claims that little is known about the biographies of these immigrants or their willingness to integrate. The BSW election manifesto claims, “The naive policy of welcoming immigrants in recent years has led to a disproportionate increase in knife crime, sexual crime and religiously motivated terrorism.”
There are some parallels with the Left Party on the question of how Russia’s war in Ukraine should end. The BSW wants a ceasefire without any preconditions, and is warning against getting involved in a new arms race. He said, “We should not prepare for war in the nuclear age.” “A new policy of reducing tension is needed. Wars are ending through dialogue.”
Strong criticism of Israel’s military campaign
Since the attack on Israel by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7, 2023, BSW has described the Middle East as a “powder keg”. It says that all the major powers in the region are fighting their struggles on the basis of population.
Its election manifesto reads, “What began as Israeli self-defense against the Hamas massacre has long since turned into a brutal campaign of revenge and extermination by the Netanyahu government against women and children in the Gaza Strip.”
The BSW also rejects increased military spending: “The story of the Bundeswehr being ‘cut to the bones’ is a myth. German military spending has more than doubled since 2014 and will reach around €90 billion ($92 billion) in 2024. It is done.”
Germany has now reached the target agreed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of investing 2% of its economic output in its defense budget.
Don’t mention leftist party
If the BSW and its official chancellor candidate Sahra Wagenknecht have their way, Germany will disarm. It is doubtful whether the new party will be able to commit to this in the next Bundestag, and if the BSW fails to enter the Bundestag at all, it will be a personal defeat for its founder.
Meanwhile, the Left Party, Wagenknecht’s former party, may be able to make it into the Bundestag without even crossing the 5% barrier. To do so, it will have to win at least three constituencies outright, as the Left party did in 2021. It was thus able to obtain approximately 40 seats in the Bundestag, although its share of the vote was only 4.9%. Wagenknecht was one of those who benefited from this, and was able to enter parliament as one of these representatives.
At the end of the party’s election conference, the BSW leader was excited and appealed to more than 600 delegates to go to the election campaign: “Now let’s fight together! Because we will make a big breakthrough on February 23!”
This article was translated from German.
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