Announcement from the Berlin Left Party: Emde should be the end

It wasn't high noon when the two state chairmen of the Berlin Left Party announced the decision, but the announcement came in time for the "Tagesschau" in prime time. “We no longer trust her,” declared Kerstin Wolter and Maximilian Schirmer on Friday evening after a meeting of the state executive committee of the capital’s Left Party.

The one who the top of the state party no longer trusts is the controversial MP Vanessa Emde. She had repeatedly denied Israel's right to exist and had herself photographed with Ibrahim Ibrahim, a sympathizer of Hamas terror. The board has now decided that Emde should give up her mandate as a member of the left-wing faction in the Berlin House of Representatives.

“She has repeatedly and consciously ignored our joint decisions,” said Wolter and Schirmer on Friday, explaining the reasons. A mandate is not an I-AG. "Mandates are won collectively: through the work and votes of candidates, members and the entire party. This gives rise to responsibility for one's own actions." At the end there was the unmistakable announcement from the two country leaders: “Enough is enough.”

The pressure on the Left Party to finally bring about the end of the Emde had increased again in the past few days. In the taz, the left-wing Bundestag member Katalin Gennburg had already called on Emde to resign on Wednesday. “For me, I’ve reached a point where I think it’s enough,” Gennburg said.

Emde, which had won a direct mandate in Neukölln, had previously not only repeated her statement that states had no right to exist. During the party conference last Saturday, at which the Left decided to start coalition negotiations with the Greens and the SPD, they also demonstrated against their own party in front of the conference venue. "Elected for Palestine. Betrayed for the Senate," was the motto of the critics of a red-green-red alliance from the ranks of Palestinian solidarity groups.

Party icon Gregor Gysi also recently spoke out. “I hope that we exclude them,” Gysi said in Paul Ronzheimer’s podcast. He called Emde's statements “anti-Semitic and, above all, out of the question for my party.”

It remains to be seen whether Vanessa Emde will actually return her mandate. If she doesn't, she could be expelled from the left-wing parliamentary group in the House of Representatives. This meets on Tuesday. If the parliamentary group executive committee requests that Emde be kicked out of the 44-member parliamentary group, it could be voted on on Tuesday. A two-thirds majority is required for exclusion.

It is now increasingly likely that this will come together. As can be heard from circles in the group, some of the MPs who are new to the group wanted to get their own opinion first. Emde's appearances, not least her appearance during the party conference, convinced many MPs that there was no longer any basis for trust for cooperation.

With the call to resign their mandate and a possible request for expulsion from the parliamentary group, the Left is also meeting a demand from the Berlin SPD. Their parliamentary group and state leader Steffen Krach had declared that there would be no left-wing alliance with Vanessa Emde as part of the left-wing faction.

However, the two left-wing chairmen in Emde have left a small door open. “Vanessa Emde has a week to return to us,” added Wolter and Schirmer. “To do this, she should delete her Instagram post, apologize for her appearance on the sidelines of the party conference and promise constructive cooperation based on our decisions.”

Will Emde walk through the door? Unlikely.