Erfurt (dpa/th) - The party leadership of the Thuringian Left Party has proposed Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow as the top candidate for the 2024 state elections. According to the state party executive, the 66-year-old should lead the left in the election campaign for the 2024 state election, as Thuringia's left leader Ulrike Grosse-Röthig said on Saturday in Erfurt. The final decision on the top candidate is made by a state party conference.
In a speech to functionaries and members of the Thuringian Left Party, Ramelow drew a positive balance of his term of office. "We have difficulties ahead of us," he said, referring to the energy crisis and its economic impact, but the problems at hand can be solved.
Ramelow said he wanted to continue to modernize the country while taking people with him. He accused the opposition CDU and its state party and parliamentary group leader Mario Voigt of pursuing party politics in the difficult negotiations for a 2023 budget and putting Thuringia in a bad light. "Our country is being badmouthed," said Ramelow, "for reasons of partisan optics."
In Thuringia, a new state parliament is scheduled to be elected in 2024. Ramelow has been Prime Minister in the Free State since 2014 with an interruption and so far the only head of government in Germany with a Left party book. Since his re-election in March 2020, he has led a red-red-green minority government that lacks four votes in parliament for majorities.
