Friday, May 30, 2008

Lafontaine: 'We have the wind of history in our sails'

After a year of stellar successes, almost 600 delegates from Germany's new left-wing party, Die Linke, came together for the party's first ever congress, held in the east German city of Cottbus on May 25 and 26.
Former East German communist Lothar Bisky and former Social Democratic Party (SPD) national president Oscar Lafontaine, once dubbed by the media as "Europe's most dangerous man", were re-elected as co-chairs of the party, and a social justice-oriented platform was adopted for the coming period, which includes state elections in Bavaria this September and federal elections next year.

Die Linke was officially formed in 2007 as a fusion between the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS — the successor to the former East German ruling party) and a collection of militants, unionists and socialists from the west organised as the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG). Die Linke now has almost 80,000 members.