German Green party leaders resign after election losses
Al Jazeera
Co-leaders’ exits come after the party failed to cross five percent threshold in Thuringia and Brandenburg state polls.
The co-leaders of Germany’s Greens party, which is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition, have said they would quit after a series of election blows that saw their party ejected from two regional parliaments.
The decision made by Omid Nouripour and Ricarda Lang on Wednesday comes at a time of turbulence for the coalition, buffeted by voter angst over the economic challenges facing Germany and by fierce debates over migration as a national election looms next year.
“The result in Brandenburg [in the regional election] on Sunday is a sign our party is in its deepest crisis of a decade,” Nouripour told a news conference. “It is time to lay our beloved party’s fate in others’ hands.”
In Thuringia and Brandenburg states, the Greens failed to cross the five percent threshold needed to enter parliament, and in Saxony, they just scraped in.
Co-leader Lang said the party “needs new faces to lead it out of this crisis” and oversee a “strategic reorientation” before the national poll.
