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.
