In future, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance will also agree to AfD proposals if it finds the content of the demands correct. This applies at all political levels, including in the Bundestag, said party founder Sahra Wagenknecht on Tuesday in Berlin. If the AfD requests a minimum wage of 14 euros, the BSW would agree, she said. At the same time, Wagenknecht distinguished this from “active cooperation” and emphasized: “But there will be no coalition or any form of direct cooperation.”
The BSW chairwoman explained her position as follows: “We will no longer take part in the nonsense of voting against every motion just because the AfD is on it, thereby providing the AfD with templates that it can then use for its social media campaigns to humiliate all the other parties.”
Even if the AfD were to propose that “the sky is blue,” other parties would reject it, said Wagenknecht. “And that’s why the next time the AfD proposes that, whether it’s in a local parliament or wherever, that “the sky is blue,” we won’t reflexively say, no, we’re convinced that it’s green.” The BSW will “no longer practice this.”
Wagenknecht continued: “Of course, I think that in political debates we should always look to see whether a demand is right or wrong and we should no longer play this game of rejecting things out of hand just because we don’t like the person who is making the request. Precisely because by doing so we are strengthening the person who is making the request.”
The announcement has little practical significance for the Bundestag, as the BSW currently has only ten representatives there and would not be able to help the AfD gain a majority. Things could soon look different in local or state parliaments.
In Thuringia, for example, the latest survey by Infratest Dimap puts the AfD at 28 percent and the BSW at 21 percent. If both parties actually get a mathematical majority in the state elections on September 1, they could jointly push through political decisions, provided they agree on individual issues.