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German Left-Wing Lawmaker Announces Creation of New Opposition Party

BERLIN (Sputnik) - German lawmaker Sahra Wagenknecht, who has criticized Germany's military aid to Kiev and sanctions against Russia, said on Monday that she had abandoned The Left party and intended to found a new political party with several close associates that stands for "reason and justice."
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Wagenknecht made the announcement at the first press conference of the new political alliance.
The former parliamentary leader of The Left, Amira Mohamed Ali, was elected chair of the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance - For Reason and Justice, which currently includes 10 lawmakers who quit The Left on Monday.

"We can see that many people in this country have lost faith in politics. They do not feel represented by any of the existing political parties. We want to fill this gap in the German party system and create a party that stands for economic sanity, social justice, peace and freedom," Ali stated at the press conference.

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Wagenknecht stressed Germany has the "worst" government for the current time of global instability.

"We are living in times of global crises. More and more conflicts and wars are breaking out, with a dangerous potential for escalation. And it is precisely in these times that the [German] Federal Republic has perhaps one of the worst governments in its history — a government that acts without a plan, is short-sighted and sometimes totally incompetent," Wagenknecht emphasized.

The impetus for creating a new party, the politician said, was the realization that the German government's current policy of encouraging citizens to protest by voting for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) opposition party could not continue.

"We need to return to political sanity, and this applies first and foremost to our economic policy. Germany is a country that is poor in raw materials but rich in exports. A large part of our well-being depends on high industrial added value. But with the economic sanctions [against Russia] we have cut ourselves off from cheap energy resources without any viable alternatives," Wagenknecht clarified.

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The lawmaker also criticized the German government's desire to join one of the emerging geopolitical blocs, as well as the country's "finger-wagging" foreign policy, which has led to its international isolation.

"It is a big mistake that this government has almost completely turned away from the important tradition of deescalation policy, to which Germany owes its reunification," Wagenknecht stated.

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Berlin is no longer interested in mediation, diplomacy and respect for mutual interests, she added.

"Instead, it is playing the war card in more and more conflicts around the world. But these conflicts cannot be solved by military force, and this applies to Ukraine as well as to the Middle East," the politician emphasized.

Wagenknecht also said she was certain that Germany needed a party that would consistently stand for diplomacy and settling conflicts at the negotiating table, and would distance itself from the current idea that "a military conflict could be settled by supplying more and more weapons."
In 2023, Wagenknecht was ranked third on the list of the most popular German politicians several times in a row. On February 25, she organized a large demonstration in Berlin in support of a truce in Ukraine and against further escalation of the conflict due to Western arms supplies. In March, she announced that she would no longer run for parliament as a candidate from The Left. In June, the leadership of The Left stated that Wagenknecht needed to resign, but she said that she did not intend to do so.
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