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5 unusual facts about Willi van Ooyen


Hesse state election, 2009

The candidates for the office of minister-president in 2009 were the incumbent Roland Koch of the CDU; the new Hesse SPD party leader, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel; Tarek Al-Wazir for the Greens; Jörg-Uwe Hahn for the FDP; and Willi van Ooyen for the Linke.

Willi van Ooyen

He was again the Linke party's candidate for minister-president in the 2009 Landtag election in Hesse, where his party again won 6 seats.

In organized politics, his first major position was Hessian leader of the Marxist German Peace Union (Deutsche Friedensunion, DFU) as managing director—a partial successor of the banned Communist Party of Germany — in 1976.

He became affiliated with the new socialist party in Germany, Die Linke, in 2007, and was nominated as their candidate for minister-president in the 2008 Hessian state election.

Willi van Ooyen (born 23 February 1947 in Weeze) is a German politician of the socialist Linke Party, and current leader of the Linke party's bloc in the Hessian Landtag.



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