electionsWhat does a party do when competitors plunder its ideas and voters leave too? In SP they don’t seem to know the exact answer. So, there are simply protests against its socialist members. Perhaps the Belgian “comrade” encourages the supporters.
If the party needs you, come. And so, on Sunday morning, Wieringerwerf’s Lea Pasjes took one of the 50 SP vans to the Prinsjesdag protest in The Hague. “It’s a matter of solidarity,” she says.
On reaching Kokamp, all party members are given a protest sign. SP flags are flying as far as the eye can see. And of course the soup cart is there. Because the world may change, but SP is committed to its trusted recipe.
Pasges also knows that SP has sometimes been in a better position. At the same time, you see how other parties have adopted typical Socialist Party themes such as poverty and housing. “It’s honorable,” you think, “but you gain nothing from it.” Because the Socialist Party may be right more often than not, but it does not seem so far that the party will be able to capitalize on those victories. According to opinion polls, voters prefer newcomers such as the BBB and the New Social Contract. It’s hard, you think. “Good thing, why don’t we stay loyal to him?”
“Fighting is not always easy”
This conflict is also evident at the party leadership level. Liliane Marijnesen is on stage making a fuss about all those parties that have suddenly “sanctified” the issue of Social Security. This is fine, of course, but she is afraid that it will remain just words. So she calls on her fellow party leaders: “If you are serious, join our ideas.”
However, SP’s ideas always exceed those of competitors. Marinissen confirms that many parties want to gradually increase the minimum wage, and the Socialist Party wants to increase it to 16 euros per hour at once. More party leaders are calling for lower grocery and public transportation prices, but only the Socialist Party wants to abolish the value-added tax completely. The nationalization of energy companies and the introduction of a new health care system are also not widely accepted in The Hague.
But the fact that other parties are more moderate is no reason for Marinissen to remove her sharp edges from the spearhead of the Socialist Party. In opinion polls, the party currently has between 3 and 5 seats, compared to 9 parliamentary seats currently. Marinissen says she wants to “fight,” even though “all this fighting isn’t always easy.”
In solidarity with the “comrades”
Raoul Hedibo, leader of the Belgian Labor Party (PVDA), takes the stage, not to be confused with his Dutch namesake. The PVDA is the ideological sister party of the Socialist Party and also has Maoist origins. But what is most important today is that the Belgian SP is performing well. The party has witnessed a steady rise in recent years, which reminds us of the rise of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands at the beginning of this century under the leadership of Jan Marinissen. In 2006, it won 25 seats. A record that SP has never equaled.
Hidebo came to The Hague to show Belgium’s solidarity with the “comrades” of the Socialist Party. He recounts how years ago he himself was inspired by the approach of SP, and the “Wizard of Os”, Jan Marinissen, in particular. “When we were still very young, we studied how the Socialist Party handled things in the Netherlands.”
According to him, the “popular way” of doing politics and “going door to door” were particularly important to the success of the time. Hidebo believes the Socialist Party should stick to this, even when things go wrong. Social struggle is of paramount importance: “Elections go up and down. You have to have faith that ruptures will happen.
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