For voters, the GroenLinks-PvdA merger is almost an accomplished fact. A few PvdA leaders are cross

Former PvdA leader Ad Melkert has been trying to speak to his former party party Frans Timmermans for six months about the merger plans of GroenLinks and PvdA, he says. On Sunday, Melkert Timmermans got caught up when he was allowed to interrogate the leader of the GroenLinks-PvdA combination Operation interview In the Amsterdam debate center De Balie.

Melkert, who loudly opposes the merger, opted for the confrontation: “For whom is that new party there?” Timmermans: “I want to reach as many people as possible who think we should have a little more for people who are struggling a bit more.” Melkert: “And are they also people who eat meat or want to park? Will that succeed with GroenLinks? ”

Timmermans gets tired of that caricature. It is not that GroenLinksers want “we start living in caves and chew on grass,” he says. And ultimately the members decide whether there is merged, Timmermans tells Melkert. “And you represent perhaps 10 percent of the members.”

Last Thursday, the party boards of GroenLinks and the Labor Party announced that their members could already vote on a merger of the two parties on 21 June. This put the decision moment forward for a year, to the delight of many and frustration of some. 80 percent of the members are for a merger or a new party, it was apparent last month from a poll of EenVandaag.

‘Need for clarity’

Katinka Eikelenboom and Esther-Mirjam Sent, the chairmen of GroenLinks and the Labor Party respectively, have been working on informing members about the merger plans for weeks. In recent years, party boards have mainly organized participation, says Sent. “But I have the impression that members now need more clarity than participating.”

Eikelenboom sees the proof of that hypothesis, among other things, in the growing number of members since they announced the accelerated merger plans: “We were allowed to register 500 new members together, and we had three cancellations and the PvdA four.” She also plunges from it that in nine out of ten municipalities of GroenLinks and PvdA will participate together in the municipal elections next year.

Not everyone is enthusiastic, especially in the PvdA it is rumbling. Opponents of the merger have been collected in the Red Group. In addition to Melkert, one of the loudest voices is former chamber chairman and PvdA celebrity Gerdi Verbeet. Verbeet thinks it is ‘unwise’ that the parties want to merge, in particular because of the signature of GroenLinks: “We are in danger of losing the people with a lower income. They are entitled to a decent alternative to the PVV, “she says by telephone. With the GroenLinks, Verbeet thinks that there is a high risk that the working class will definitively run away.

Gerdi Verbeet thinks with the GroenLinks urban links that the risk is that the working class will definitively run away

‘Very sturdy’

According to Verbeet, the PvdA must reinvent itself, find the workers again. Remove the party to go together with GroenLinks goes much too far for her: “Why cancel a party that is very sturdy?” The Labor Party has remained relevant even after poor results in national elections, as “vehicle for social democracy,” says Verbeet. “Why put that in the Waag scale, it’s very expensive.”

Opinion poller Peter Kanne has been conducting voter research into a merger of GroenLinks and PvdA since 2019, and sees that the sum has been bigger than the parts for years: “I am convinced that going together is electorally wise. That was also apparent in 2023, when they got 25 seats. ” That result was not seen within the parties as a thunderous success, because they had hoped to be the largest, but under the line the parties made eight seats profit.

Kanne sees the release of the parties as ‘very unwise’. The voter would not be understandable, and it would break up the left-wing block in the room in a zipper medium-sized parties that cannot compete with the right and radical right. “Before GroenLinks and PvdA merged in 2023, elections mainly consisted of a struggle between the center right and radical-right,” said Kanne.

The fear of the old guy of the PvdA: that their social -democratic party merges into an amorphic and elitist party

Climate and Woke

That does not mean that the critical PvdA people have no point, he sees. “GroenLinks-PvdA has the signature from the old GroenLinks: many voters feel that the party is talking too much about climate, about Woke.” That scares former PvdA people and center voters. Kanne: “Center-right voters, I am thinking of NSC, BBB and CDA, for example, see GroenLinks-Pvda as so left that they can no longer imagine that they would vote for that.” That while those voters come close to the left -wing cooperation, says Kanne.

With the merger, the parties create “an excellent and one -off opportunity to straighten the image,” says Kanne. Kanne refers to the emergence of GroenLinks, which arose in 1990 after a merger of, among others, Evangelical (EVP), Communist (CPN) and Pacifist parties (PSP). “Those were all names with Ballast, and at the time they did very wise to name the GroenLinks merger party.” Now no one is talking about the mother parties anymore, Kanne sees. “In a while, young people no longer know what it was like with those earlier parties.”

Nightmares scenario

But that is precisely the fear of the old guy of the PvdA: that their social-democratic party merges into an amorphic and elitist party. The nightmares scenario for party boards is that their merger leads to splitting off dissatisfied members. Verbeet does not want to exclude that she would join a spin -off: “I take that bridge when I am in front of it.” And what Ad Melkert is going to do, he doesn’t know yet. On Sunday in the counter he did not want to say whether he will become a member of the new party.

Timmermans is unable to win his old party leader for himself, but that Melkert will become a member sooner or later is inevitable, according to Timmermans. “We just become green social-democrats, Ad, I promise you.”

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