Oskar Lafontaine
On 24 May 2005 Lafontaine left the SPD. On 10 June, he said he would run as the lead candidate for The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei), a coalition of the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG), which is based in western Germany, and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which was the successor to the East German communist party