The merger party of GroenLinks-PvdA is coming. Ad Melkert knows. He also says it himself, in the office of the Dutch Association of Hospitals (NVZ) in Utrecht, of which he is chairman. He laughs a bit. And he sighs. “At least,” he says: “There is now the decision to embrace that merger.”
Together with former two-way chairman Gerdi Verbeet and former PvdA alderman in Barendrecht Resma Roopram, Melkert is the founder of Rood Vooruit, a group of PvdA people with about 1,100 ‘supporters’ who should not have that merger. A few times a year, Rood organizes meetings on social democracy in the Utrecht Stedelijk Gymnasium. Occasionally, more than two hundred people arrived at the last meeting, Saturday afternoon, June 7, there were around fifty. Many old people, but also in their twenties, little in between. They listened concentrated to long stories about the worker who has not disappeared, and about member democracy. A former smelter of Hoogovens told about the trade union, where he was a director.
It was just before a members’ consultation at GroenLinks and PvdA showed that a vast majority of those members are before the merger: 89 percent of the GL members, of whom 63 percent voted, and 88 percent of the PvdAs, of whom 59 percent participated in the referendum.
This Saturday, GroenLinks-PvdA is holding a party congress in Nieuwegein and what will be noticeable from the anti-fusion club Red Vooruit is a long row of motions, one of which has the title: ‘Awake, rejected’. It is about the basis of the “possible new party”, which must be “unambiguous social-democratic”.
As a red, we have to get rid of the idea that we are an external group, we are just part of the party
Young red forward
The person in charge of that motion is Stijn Maas (21), history student and also involved in Rood Vooruit for a long time. He was often on stage and set up young red. Stijn Maas assumes that the motion is being assumed. “With a good introduction it must work.” He does it himself. And he hopes in a row of players at the microphone in that room that will support him.
In a conversation with NRC Stijn Maas also sounds a bit relieved. “I am glad that we no longer have to have the discussion about the merger. That merger is coming. That is now reality.” As far as he is concerned, there is “a very large line” because of the idea that Red Vooruit is an “anti -fusion movement”. He thinks it should now be “a kind of conscience” of the new party. Red Vooruit should “test” measures and the election program of GroenLinks-PvdA against Social Democracy, and exert influence “in committees, and in the Lower House Group”.
Social democracy is for him that you think from ‘working Dutch people’, who, according to him, ‘the basis of society’, and that you are political from there. “That is what the PvdA should have been for, but we forget to do that. For thirty years.” Since Wim Kok, who shielded the ‘ideological feathers’. Stijn Maas sees a left -wing movement that is not ‘put away as elitist’. That is possible together with GroenLinks, Maas thinks.
He also says: “As a red, we have to get rid of the idea that we are an external group, we are just part of the party and have to earn our place in it.”
Infectious enthusiasm
It sounds much more litigant than the story of Red Vooruit founder Reshma Roopram, in June in Utrecht. If the PvdA disappears, she said on stage, “there is a new party of labor the next day.” The room was happy, there was clapped. But it was also not Rooprams’s intention to announce a new party, she said later. The idea of such a new PvdA, when the old one disappears, hung above the red initiative for a long time. Melkert and Verbeet never wanted to exclude it completely and whether the idea is off the track for good remains unclear.
In his office in Utrecht, Melkert, former minister and former party leader of the PvdA, says it: “There are no plans for that now.”
The “enthusiasm” about the merger, among a good part of the members, calls Melkert “Inquisitive.” He himself stays with “two very important questions.” The first is about the social -democratic basis and if the motion of Stijn Maas is assumed, he says, that helps. But Melkert believes that GroenLinks-PvdA should also decide to join the Social Democratic group in the European Parliament. Now GroenLinks-PvdA is there divided between the Social Democrats and the Greens. “The story behind the merger is always that we must be a power factor of interest. I understand that, I think so. But then you have to be in Europe.” Social democracy, says Melkert, is “a main movement” in European politics, which has been participating in power for a long time. “The history of this goes back to the workers’ movement.” What Melkert is concerned about: that in the story of GL-PVDA leader Frans Timmermans and the scientific agencies of GroenLinks and the PvdA that “history” is thrown into “one basket with groups committed to the environment and the queer movement”.
Melkert’s idea is to get involved with the merger. He will continue to come with criticism, especially when it comes to the PvdA members and what they still have to say.
If the elections become a “resounding success” for GroenLinks-PvdA, Melkert “will be the first to say: you’ve seen that well”
Test case
According to Melkert, the elections in October will be ‘a test case’.
If the elections become a “resounding success” for GroenLinks-PvdA, he will “be the first to say: you’ve seen that well”.
But if it is disappointing: “Then I think there should be room for introspection: how you continue with that merger decision.”
What would he find a ‘resounding success’? “A lot more than what we have now.” Now they are 25 seats. Thirty then? “No, I’m not going to mention numbers. It also depends on where those voters come from.” It is not the intention, Melkert believes that GL-PvdA ‘eats’ other left-wing parties. “We also have to remove voters in the middle and from the right. And those staying at home.”
Whether he will also campaign himself? Melkert hesitates. “It depends on whether I would be asked. And it always starts in your own environment, isn’t it. That you say: vote for GroenLinks-Pvda.” He will do that.
Grain of salt
At the VVD congress, last week, Dilan Yesilgöz lashed out to GroenLinks. She was talking about the “extreme left-radical activist part of the supporters” of that party. But Melkert does not think that it will become more difficult for the upcoming merger party to participate in power after the elections. “You have to take that with a pinch of salt. Everyone can see that the number-of-way-wise is huge that GroenLinks-Pvda will join. And not just numerical, the country is ready.”
According to Melkert, there are members of the House of Representatives, “and more than some,” and mayors and aldermen of the PvdA who say behind the scenes against him and Gerdi Veret that they have to continue. Because they also have many questions about the merger, and doubt, but don’t dare say that out loud.
Former alderman Reshma Roopram recognizes that. Opponents of the merger feel “socially unsafe,” she says. Roopram himself notices that it is seen as “right, nostalgic or conservative.” According to Roopram, people with a bright future in the merger party all have the image that they are before the merger. No need for anything, she thinks. “In the end we all have the same interest.”
But if the merger continues, she will “reconsider” whether she wants to be a member of it. It will not be herself who comes with a new party. “But maybe others do that. Then the question is: is that party attractive enough for me?”
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