Leaders of PvdA and GroenLinks recently expressed their outspoken support for a joint Senate faction. That idea does not go down well with everyone. Critics within both parties are submitting two separate submissions on Friday de Volkskrant† On Saturday 11 June, GroenLinks will announce the results of the members’ referendum on the formation of one senate faction. On the same day, the members of the PvdA vote on the collaboration at their congress.
The signatories on the social-democratic side also include Dig Istha (former Groningen alderman and former party board member), former board member Fouad Sidali and former MPs John Leerdam and Lutz Jacobi. They believe that the party is taking ‘hasty steps’ towards a merger with GroenLinks. “There’s a lawsuit going on that threatens to tear the party apart.”
Labor Party
The PvdA members see that the party must change and are therefore not ‘categorically against’ cooperation. ‘It could very well be that a merger with GroenLinks could yield new impetus and electoral gains. For the PvdA and for GroenLinks.’ But this should be preceded by a more careful process, in which the PvdA must also ask itself whether the party will not definitively lose ‘the traditional supporters’ after a merger. ‘The people with a small grant and a modest education have left us and feel betrayed. Can we get it back through a collaboration or a merger with GroenLinks?’
The prominent people call on the party leadership to involve all departments and all members in the cooperation plans and to first formulate an answer to the question of who will be the new leader, what the substantive program will be and whether a merger will strengthen the party’s position.
GreenLeft
Opponents are also coming forward within GroenLinks, especially from the younger generation. Led by former chairman of the youth association Dwars, Sabine Scharwachter, they are speaking out against a merger with the PvdA. They see no point in collaborating with a ‘shrinking administrative party’ that has paid insufficient attention to the interests of today’s young people.
The GroenLinks refer to the PvdA membership of Schiphol boss Dick Benschop, to mayor Aboutaleb, whose city of Rotterdam has been reprimanded by the United Nations because of its housing policy and various PvdA members who ‘raked in oil money’ at Shell after their political career. They also warn that a merger is no guarantee of seat gains and of the danger that left-wing voters will walk away, resulting in ‘further fragmentation in the left-wing landscape’.
Not all young people in GroenLinks share that fear. The current board of the youth movement Dwars called on the supporters on Thursday to vote in favor of a joint Senate group.