On the posters for the state elections in the east, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is promoting issues such as education, security and “peace”, which the party leader understands to mean an end to support for Ukraine.
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But the core of the political start-up’s brand is another topic that is once again increasingly moving into the political debate: the evaluation of the corona measures. As a member of the Left Party, Wagenknecht had already emphasized her skepticism about vaccination in talk shows during the pandemic – she now feels confirmed by the debate about the protocols of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
Investigative committees with AfD votes
After the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia and after the 2025 federal election, the BSW wants to set up parliamentary investigative committees to examine the Corona measures policy – and would also work with the AfD to do so. BSW health expert Friedrich Pürner told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND): “There must definitely be an investigative committee in the Bundestag. Only an investigative committee can summon witnesses and gain access to files without hurdles. An investigative committee can take evidence and also has coercive powers.”
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Friedrich Pürner, BSW health expert and Member of the European Parliament.
Source: BSW
After the state elections in the east and also in the next Bundestag, the BSW will submit proposals to set up investigative committees, said Pürner. “We hope that as many as possible from other factions, including the AfD, will agree to this request.” The investigation is “a task for society as a whole” and must be “tackled across party lines.” The AfD is also part of this.
“There is no room for firewalls and guilt by association. Both are absolutely counterproductive to dealing with the past and do not meet the wishes of the population,” Pürner told the RND. Apart from the AfD, which has pushed through investigative committees in Brandenburg and Hesse, for example, no party supports this instrument.
Opposition, coalition or even prime minister: Can Wagenknecht’s BSW still be stopped?
Hardly any members, no party structure, no start to the election campaign – and yet the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance in Brandenburg is rising in popularity faster and faster than any other party. On the trail of a phenomenon.
Four external experts for BSW Corona policy
The 57-year-old Pürner headed a Bavarian health authority until 2020, protested against the Corona measures of the government of Markus Söder (CSU) and lost his post. He entered the EU Parliament for the BSW in June. He heads the young party’s expert council on the Corona investigation. The BSW wants to develop a party program in such councils with outside expertise by 2025.
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The council has already met several times. Now Pürner has also announced its participants: the internist Matthias Schrappe, the astrophysicist Bernhard Müller, the political and data scientist Simon Hegelich and the pulmonologist Thomas Voshaar. Like Pürner, all of them had expressed criticism of certain corona measures in the past.
Pürner would like to see an analysis in three “pillars”: a scientific one, a political one and a social one. The BSW politician calls for a “Day of Reconciliation” on which once a year “we are reminded of the measures that have made society sick”. The skeptics should be confirmed: “You were right about many things”. The “fearful” should have “their fear of illness and death from an unknown disease recognised”.
Pürner is less conciliatory towards those in political positions of responsibility. He calls for the resignation of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and accuses government politicians in general of “lies”, “deception” and “incitement”.
Pürner told the RND: “It was a lie to proclaim the ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’. And it was a deception and a campaign of incitement that turned people against each other. Lauterbach and Söder in particular did not cut a good figure here.” He expects “an apology and an acceptance of responsibility from decision-makers at all levels – and hopefully from one or the other the realization that he or she is no longer suitable for political office and must resign.” Scientists like Christian Drosten must also “apologize and take responsibility because they have profited from the corona panic,” says the BSW politician. He accuses the politicians responsible across all parties of having “acted knowingly and against their better judgment and thereby caused massive harm to the population.”
