On the successful citizens' referendum against the privatisation of local municipal companies in the city of Leipzig, Sahra Wagenknecht, member of the executive of the LEFT PARTY and of the European Parliament, declares:

The people of Leipzig have decided. At the citizens' referendum on Sunday, 87.4 percent of Leipzig citizens voted against a privatisation of the local city works and thwarted royally the plans of the privatisation advocates consisting of CDU, SPD and FDP. Thanks to the tireless effort of numerous activists, almost 150,000 people could be mobilised to guarantee the maintenance of basic municipal services in Leipzig. That is a signal far beyond Leipzig. The times where public enterprises could be sold without any scandal to private firms are over!

Be it a matter of a city´s department of works or hospitals, of Deutsche Bahn or the educational system, of local city works or apartment firms: it is worth to struggle against the sell-out of public property and to fend for the remunicipalisation of already privatised companies! Central sectors of a society do not belong into the hands of private companies, but must be oriented towards the interests of the common wealth and democratically managed!

The vote by the Leipzig people reflects the experiences that countless people have had with reckless privatisation and liberalisation policy. Because growing prices and falling wages, the elimination of jobs and a qualitatively worsening of services are the logical consequence when services of general interest are subjected to the profit principle.

The growing dissatisfaction of the people with the neoliberal privatisation and redistribution policy is also one of the central reasons why the party The Left succeeded to establish itself at the federal level and to enter the regional parliaments of Lower Saxony and Hessen with very good results. Now it is a matter of transforming the hopes of the women and men voters into practical policy. The struggle for cost-free access to education and health, for the democratic control of energy and water companies, for mobility for everybody and affordable living space acquires enormous importance in that light. Together with social initiatives and trade unions, privatisations must also be prevented elsewhere or reversed!

Sahra Wagenknecht, MEP
Brussels, January 28, 2008