"Anger and resistance into the council" – this slogan of the German affiliate of the CWI in the local election campaign in the East German town of Rostock will become a reality in the first council meeting after the elections on June 13th as Socialist Alternative (CWI Germany) won it’s first councillor.
cwi election campaigns 2004. Germany.
Socialist Alternative wins first councillor in Rostock,Germany
Christine Lehnert will be the first directly elected trotskyist councillor in Germany for decades. With 2.5 percent SAV only narrowly missed a second council seat and received around 4,000 votes (as every voter had three votes this means probably around 2,000 voters).
After an intense election campaign SAV memebers and supporters could celebrate. This was not the case for the social democratic party and for the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism – former East German ruling stalinist party) which lost many votes. While the votes were counted in the council hall SAV’s success was a number on issue amongst the representatives of the other parties.
All of the established politicians seemed to agree that they will not cooperate with the socialists – no surprise as SAV was the only force which opposed the increase of council funding for the political parties of 130,000 Euros just a week ago. SAV will now prepare for a campaign against this rip-off of the working people in Rostock and also against the planned privatisation of one of the two public hospitals in the city. This was SAV’s first electoral "strike" this year – local election campaigns in Cologne and Aachen will follow in september – and we hope to gain council seats number two and three!
Be the first to comment