'More politics, less psychology'

May 22, 1991
Issue 

A founding member of the Greens, outgoing federal Executive Committee member and member of the International Affairs Committee, JÜRGEN MAIER said the rightists will probably try to block the work of the two new left-wing party spokespeople "like in 1987, when all three speakers were left wing.

"They mobilised the states against them and started a smear campaign accusing them of financial mismanagement. There are already rumours being floated about Christine Weiske and the Stasi [the political police in the GDR] and misuse of funds."

Maier said the Greens have "always been a party where a majority do not belong to one of the two wings but want to have harmony. They always vote one left, one right, one centre. The right upset a lot of people when they presented their three candidates for speaker and said that they would save the party: 'Either you vote for us or you get chaos'.

"I think the party always made the mistake of letting its extreme wings have too much influence. A few years ago you could have established good cooperation between the Left Forum and the reasonable sections of the Realos.

"At this convention the left should have concentrated more on politics and less on psychology. A lot of mistakes of the Greens result from this rather apolitical approach, which always benefits the right.

"This is not a victory of the left that will change the nature of the party. In the past four or five weeks at state conventions, the right has won important victories and agreements to change the state structures quite radically.

"Before, members had opportunities to influence the federal executive even if they weren't in an official position in one of the states. Now that is diminished. What we need is new people with new ideas. In one way, the two spokespeople are a break with the past. They are not products of the 1968 movement."

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