BERLIN, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Germany loses one of its most controversial politicians as Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine, once termed the most dangerous man in Europe, quits politics because of his poor health.
After months of speculation over his future, Lafontaine, 66, over the weekend announced he would resign from Parliament and as party chief because of his prostate cancer. "I am a political person, and this decision was not easy for me," Lafontaine said.
Two little-known politicians, Klaus Ernst and Gesine Loetsch, were nominated Tuesday as the new male-female leadership duo to be confirmed at the party's annual conference in May.
It's nevertheless a major tectonic shift for the Left Party, a group of former communists and disgruntled Social Democrats that Lafontaine in just four years turned from a political startup into a boom party in Germany.
"He is irreplaceable," said his party colleague Gregor Gisy, a charismatic former lawyer who grew up in the GDR.
Lafontaine's charisma helped the Left Party, traditionally strong in the eastern states, to millions of votes in western Germany.
Last year in Saarland, Lafontaine's home state, the group nearly outperformed the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, winning an impressive 21.3 percent of the ballot.
The Left Party in the 2009 national elections got 12 percent of the ballot, up from 9 percent in 2005; its politicians today sit in all but three state parliaments and share power with the SPD in Berlin, a key city state.
Because of Lafontaine's leftist convictions, The Economist called him the "most dangerous man in Europe" and the British tabloid press "Red Oskar."
Dangerous he proved only for Germany's established four-party system, which Lafontaine helped shake up by rallying fellow Social Democrats and uniting them with the leftovers of an eastern German far-left group.
The Left Party had its first nationwide success when it exponentially increased its presence in the Bundestag, from two to 53 seats in the 2005 election.
Analysts say Lafontaine's resignation might ease cooperation with the SPD, from which many voters defected to the Left Party, on a national level.
The SPD has in the past ruled out teaming up with the Left Party because of Lafontaine's controversial past with the center-left party.
Lafontaine once ran for chancellor for the SPD and was Gerhard Schroeder's finance minister until he fell out with him over Schroeder's controversial welfare reforms.
With Lafontaine now gone, the SPD and the Left Party, together with the Greens, could pose a real threat to the conservative coalition of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and the pro-business Free Democrats.
Yet the Left Party also has some internal homework to do: It needs to shed its image of a populist party trying to bring back socialism a la East Germany by presenting a full-fledged political program, observers say.
Because of the group's extremist tendencies, some states have it monitored by a domestic intelligence agency.
Critics say the Left Party hasn't achieved much in the opposition and campaigns with unrealistic -- because they are too expensive -- economic and social policies. Other analysts say the Left Party's officials have proved able and reliable politicians over the past years and are being unjustly scorned by the major parties.
Lothar Bisky, another party leader, told the press during the 2009 campaign that many of his party's proposals over the past four years have been refused, only to be resubmitted later by the other parties.
