Fractious Left-Wing Alliance Ratifies Merger Agreement

The merger would see the two sides become one by the middle of next year.

While regional branches of the WASG in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania continue to insist they will stand alone in state elections there in September, Left Party faction leader Gregor Gysi heralded the ratification of merger plans first agreed upon in principle in April.

"The majority of Left Party and WASG members want to go this way," he said.

The two parties rubber-stamped the plans for the merger at a meeting to agree a new manifesto which, according to Left Party chief Lothar Bisky, would center on responding to the needs of employees, the socially weak, pensioners and small enterprises.

WASG director Klaus Ernst announced that the cooperation agreement, signed between the two parties before the general elections last September, remained valid and that the parties would build on that agreement to present a strong left-wing alternative in the future. The alliance won more than 8 percent of the vote at the last general election to become the fourth biggest party in Germany's lower house of parliament.

Party will counteract the rise of the right, say Lafontaine

"The new left will come," Oskar Lafontaine, the Left Party faction co-leader and the WASG's highest-profile member, told reporters. "In the last few years there has been a strong rise in the right and this party will counteract that."

Bisky echoed the view that the party had a strong future.

"The prospects of future success for this new party are substantially stronger than those we have presently," he said, adding that it would be the only fair and democratic union in German politics.

The new Left Party manifesto called for the establishment of a socialist society "where the left would be released from the crimes of Stalinism and one-party dictatorships, where the party would take responsibility and a new approach."

The manifesto also criticized privatization of public equipment and services, called for shorter working hours and higher taxes on large incomes and property. It also rejected a return to nuclear energy.

Rebel WASG factions prepared to battle PDS

But even as the merger was getting the seal of approval, the union's next major crisis was looming on the horizon with rebel WASG factions intent on standing against its former communist alliance partner still at odds with the Left Party's influence and platform.

Many of the WASG memberships do not consider themselves to be socialists and have criticized the former communist PDS members, who make up a large part of the Left Party membership for having too left-wing a program.

Other groups within the WASG have taken offense to the willingness of the PDS to go into coalitions with the Social Democrats (SPD) at a regional level, saying such alliances make unity between the PDS and WASG impossible. WASG member Lafontaine used to be leader of the SPD before he had a falling out with former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD).