The Fort Worth Press - Young feminist, Iran-born old hand to lead German Greens

USD -
AED 3.672989
AFN 71.498384
ALL 91.375029
AMD 391.160458
ANG 1.790208
AOA 917.000052
ARS 1072.800695
AUD 1.589195
AWG 1.8025
AZN 1.705782
BAM 1.811219
BBD 2.018475
BDT 121.482648
BGN 1.802698
BHD 0.376971
BIF 2926
BMD 1
BND 1.343366
BOB 6.907601
BRL 5.692802
BSD 3.495
BTN 85.449031
BWP 13.836501
BYN 3.271549
BYR 19600
BZD 2.008011
CAD 1.432565
CDF 2870.999759
CHF 0.88285
CLF 0.024908
CLP 955.839761
CNY 7.268101
CNH 7.280205
COP 4153.75
CRC 502.211006
CUC 1
CUP 26.5
CVE 102.050366
CZK 22.988495
DJF 177.720185
DKK 6.87673
DOP 63.324964
DZD 133.712147
EGP 50.568902
ERN 15
ETB 129.849787
EUR 0.921645
FJD 2.322499
FKP 0.773835
GBP 0.770995
GEL 2.760391
GGP 0.773835
GHS 15.454482
GIP 0.773835
GMD 72.127796
GNF 8649.682527
GTQ 7.713223
GYD 209.94982
HKD 7.78277
HNL 25.564942
HRK 6.941603
HTG 130.445587
HUF 372.296894
IDR 16718.576893
ILS 3.701965
IMP 0.773835
INR 85.554357
IQD 1308.299078
IRR 42104.284763
ISK 133.051944
JEP 0.773835
JMD 156.330273
JOD 0.70906
JPY 150.114501
KES 129.247253
KGS 86.535048
KHR 3993.237165
KMF 455.492709
KPW 900.019816
KRW 1471.238741
KWD 0.308329
KYD 0.831751
KZT 503.440561
LAK 21634.158301
LBP 89322.563868
LKR 294.670386
LRD 199.943579
LSL 18.386538
LTL 2.95274
LVL 0.60489
LYD 4.811016
MAD 9.629604
MDL 17.958258
MGA 4670.178386
MKD 56.942607
MMK 2099.510008
MNT 3481.383862
MOP 8.013924
MRU 39.697342
MUR 45.624205
MVR 15.4421
MWK 1731.877317
MXN 20.45005
MYR 4.436466
MZN 63.884802
NAD 18.386538
NGN 1536.893581
NIO 36.760755
NOK 10.40773
NPR 136.951137
NZD 1.744181
OMR 0.384995
PAB 1
PEN 3.668903
PGK 4.090104
PHP 57.238189
PKR 279.631053
PLN 3.872133
PYG 7946.798552
QAR 3.639572
RON 4.608694
RSD 108.488768
RUB 84.529386
RWF 1418.368583
SAR 3.74987
SBD 8.500308
SCR 14.484863
SDG 600.465319
SEK 9.913065
SGD 1.343437
SHP 0.785843
SLE 22.830348
SLL 20969.501083
SOS 570.385514
SRD 36.855947
STD 20697.981008
SVC 8.749972
SYP 13002.468687
SZL 18.386538
THB 34.186323
TJS 10.900219
TMT 3.497766
TND 3.103211
TOP 2.407834
TRY 37.92291
TTD 6.767183
TWD 33.248604
TZS 2646.107198
UAH 41.255737
UGX 3649.561079
UYU 42.148301
UZS 12911.275778
VES 69.589677
VND 25640.752098
VUV 123.375609
WST 2.83707
XAF 607.323613
XAG 0.029609
XAU 0.00032
XCD 2.707403
XDR 0.752731
XOF 607.323613
XPF 110.484353
YER 246.006073
ZAR 18.840565
ZMK 9001.19551
ZMW 28.143801
ZWL 321.999592
  • RIO

    -0.3400

    59.89

    -0.57%

  • RBGPF

    0.0000

    68

    0%

  • CMSC

    0.0400

    22.48

    +0.18%

  • BTI

    -0.8450

    40.255

    -2.1%

  • NGG

    -0.0100

    65.77

    -0.02%

  • RYCEF

    -0.2700

    9.78

    -2.76%

  • VOD

    -0.1500

    9.12

    -1.64%

  • GSK

    -0.2350

    37.635

    -0.62%

  • RELX

    0.2800

    50.95

    +0.55%

  • SCS

    0.1400

    11.46

    +1.22%

  • BP

    -0.0100

    33.8

    -0.03%

  • AZN

    -0.3800

    72.22

    -0.53%

  • CMSD

    0.0210

    22.841

    +0.09%

  • BCE

    -0.9550

    21.825

    -4.38%

  • BCC

    3.1400

    102.05

    +3.08%

  • JRI

    0.0600

    13.04

    +0.46%

Young feminist, Iran-born old hand to lead German Greens
Young feminist, Iran-born old hand to lead German Greens

Young feminist, Iran-born old hand to lead German Greens

Germany's Green party elected fresh leadership Saturday just a month after joining its first national government in 16 years, crowning a duo mixing new blood with outspoken policy experience.

Text size:

Feminist Ricarda Lang, 28, and Iranian-born foreign policy expert Omid Nouripour, 46, are taking the reins of the ecologist party as it attempts to keep supporters onside while maintaining a tricky coalition in Berlin.

The Greens and their chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock scored their highest ever result in last September's general election with 14.8 percent of the vote.

But they fell short of even bigger expectations that they could name Angela Merkel's successor.

The party wound up joining Germany's first three-way national coalition, under Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats and alongside the pro-business Free Democrats.

Baerbock, now foreign minister, and her Greens co-leader Robert Habeck, the new vice chancellor, have stepped aside as chiefs of the party, whose flagship issue is fighting climate change.

- 'Fairness' -

Lang has become a rising star in German politics since being elected as a lawmaker last year and is now one of the youngest party leaders in post-war history.

Speaking just after her election, she promised to link protecting the environment to social progress.

The climate crisis "is particularly hitting those who have the least", she said.

Hailing from a small town in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany's only Greens-led state, Lang joined the party at 18 and became its deputy leader in November 2019 as well as its spokeswoman on women's affairs.

Before entering politics, the daughter of a single mother broke off her law studies to become a social worker in a home for abused women.

Coming to see government as the place to exact systemic change, she took over the leadership of the Greens' youth group from 2017 to 2019.

"I believe in fairness," she told local media, "so that people like my mother can have it easier in the future."

The Greens traditionally strive for gender balance in the leadership, and choose a pragmatist and an idealist, in this case Lang, at the top.

As an outspoken, openly bisexual woman in the public eye, Lang has faced a deluge of hate speech online, the most egregious of which she has fought with criminal complaints.

She has pledged to keep the party's often unruly ranks loyal "by making the Green profile apparent and ever stronger" even as it forges the compromises necessary to keep the coalition in Berlin together.

- 'Organic kebabs' -

Omid Nouripour, who was born in Tehran in 1975, has made his name chiefly on foreign policy in debates in the Bundestag, where he has served as an MP for over 15 years.

Particularly after its relative success of last year's election, he has said he wants to keep the party firmly in the mainstream while tending to its activist roots.

"We will become the leading force of the centre-left in Germany," he has pledged.

That includes keeping its eyes on the top prize -- the chancellery -- in the 2025 election, he said Saturday.

And that can only work, he argues, "if we think beyond the day-to-day of governing" with the Social Democrats and the FDP.

Nouripour has strived to sharpen the Green profile on human rights, calling most recently for a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

He strongly criticised Merkel while still in office for speaking directly to Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko by telephone, calling it a "disastrous signal".

Nouripour moved with his family as refugees from Iran to Germany in 1988 and started school in Frankfurt as a teenager.

After breaking off his studies in philosophy and law, Nouripour stood for parliament, winning the seat of Joschka Fischer when the Greens grandee left politics in 2006.

The avid football supporter and observant Muslim has won fans for his playful approach to multiculturalism, not least in a 2009 campaign video rapping about more renewable energy and "organic kofta kebabs for everyone".

M.Cunningham--TFWP