In a show of unity, Germany's Left gears up for national elections

"If the Left is weakened in the election, there will be no stopping the neo-liberal bloc," party chief Oskar Lafontaine told some 500 delegates at his party's congress in Berlin on Sunday.

September's Bundestag parliamentary vote will be crucial for the Left party and Lafontaine's goal of thwarting Chancellor Angela Merkel's stated aim of forming a center-right government with the liberal Free Democrats, who are currently in opposition.

Lafontaine - a former Social Democrat and finance minister under former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the late nineties - said the Left party would stick with its target of reaching more than 10 percent of the vote.

It had set the same ambitious target for the European parliamentary polls earlier in the month, but the party was handed a bitter disappointment, winning merely 7.5 percent.

The weak showing in the European poll triggered finger-pointing within the party and led to some criticism of Lafontaine's dominant role in party politics.

Influencing the next government

The Left hopes to win more than 10 percent of the votes in the parliamentary poll

Lafontaine said that even if other parties refused to form a coalition with the Left, his alliance of ex-communists from former East Germany and western leftists could still play an important role in influencing both the shape and policies of the next government.

"Only a strong Left can prevent a worsening of conditions for workers, pensioners and social welfare recipients," he said.

With higher taxes, Lafontaine's party wants to finance a 200-billion-euro ($280 billion) stimulus fund to help those who have been hit the hardest by the economic crisis.

On the foreign policy front, the party has called for an immediate withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan and for a replacement of NATO with a new European security system that would include Russia.

Delegates voted in favor of the party's election manifesto

Destruction of democracy

Yet the main attacks at the weekend party congress were focused on the social and economic situation within Germany.

"Financial capitalism is destroying democracy," Lafontaine said. "We've got a vision. We want a 'free people' economy. We want a redistribution of the burdens."

Lafontaine said those who had profited from financial capitalism in recent boom years should pay for the effects of the economic crisis, which has pushed Germany, Europe's largest economy, into recession.

The Left is currently polling between eight and 11 percent in opinion surveys.

ai/ipj/dpa/APF/Reuters
Editor: Kateri Jochum