Lafontaine to step down as leader of German Left Party

GERMAN POLITICAL veteran Oskar Lafontaine is to stand down in May as leader of the Left Party, opening the door to closer political ties with the Social Democrats (SPD) he abandoned a decade ago.

Mr Lafontaine is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer and announced on Saturday he would withdraw as party leader and leave the Bundestag.

“It’s a decision based entirely on health grounds,” he said. “The cancer diagnosis was a warning signal I simply couldn’t ignore.”

Lafontaine’s departure, though not a complete surprise to colleagues, leaves behind a power vacuum at the top of Germany’s newest political party.

“He is irreplaceable,” said Gregor Gysi, the Left’s leader in the Bundestag. “The party executive has no choice but to accept Oskar Lafontaine’s decision, even if it is extremely painful.”

Mr Lafontaine returned from years in the political wilderness in 2005, with a proposal to unite the successor party to the East German communists with western German SPD members disgruntled with chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s welfare reforms.

The move created a fifth political force in German politics and sapped the energy of the SPD, a party he led for a time. After an impressive four-year run, the party now sits in the Bundestag, all but three state parliaments, and shares power in the Berlin state government.

Mr Lafontaine’s departure marks the second time he has plunged a political party into uncertainty. In 1999, bitter disagreement with Mr Schröder prompted his walk-out as Germany’s finance minister.

Since then SPD leaders ruled out ever working with him again. Thus his departure creates the possibility of new political alliances to unite Germany’s divided left.

“The personal wounds between Lafontaine and the SPD leadership never healed over, so his departure makes co-operation with the SPD easier,” said political analyst Peter Loesche yesterday.

The SPD is in desperate need of new political perspectives: after the worst general election result in its history last September, it has a new generation of leaders. Now the Left Party is poised to undergo a similar transformation.

“Many politicians in the Left Party are already dependable partners at state level,” said prominent SPD MP Nils Annen. “But whether there’s a chance of a ‘red-red’ majority in the coming years is something the Left Party itself will have to decide.”

Mr Lafontaine is by far the only stumbling block to closer co-operation. The Left Party still has no political programme, while its calls for Germany to pull out of Afghanistan and leave Nato are red lines the SPD is not prepared to cross.

Left Party leaders meet this morning to begin the difficult task of finding a successor to Mr Lafontaine, whose rhetorical skill and dominant personality helped paper over the many cracks in the party.

Most severe is the gap between western members’ more idealistic notions of democratic socialism and easterners’ more sober attitudes, coloured by personal experience of the socialist German state.