GroenLinks, which literally translates as green left, is a party that comes from the union of four parties back in the eighties. The fusion, a pragmatic step to consolidate different but coherent left wing movements, has had mixed success in elections everafter. It has not yet enter the national government, but it has decades forming government in several cities of the country, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Nijmegen among others. We have forged a well defined identity with focus on the environment as main political issue. Which, of course, is our great winning card, and also our main pitfall. There is nobody, at least not in our potential voters, that denies the relevance of climate change in 2021. Also in 2021, we are not the only political force that recognizes the environment as crucial for our welfare. Every one of our political opponents would agree with us in pretty much any assessment of the impact of climate change. The devil and the difference is in the details. Alas, details make difficult campaign material.
Now, being the fusion of four political different streams, it was unavoidable that different visions would compite for the party soul. And whether we like to admit it or not, quite some of those internal battles have survived past their consumption date. Once upon a time I got involved in one of such battles. Back in 2007, if we are to believe wikipedia, Kritisch GroenLinks was an internal critical movement, asking from the party leadership a more radical left course. I must say that Kritisch GroenLinks started back in 2005, as a small group of people that manage to reset the expulsion that the party leadership ordered of our then senator Sam Pormes. In our view he was falsely accused of having taking part in some terrorist training camp in Yemen. The board of the party ordered him to vacate his senate seat, he resisted, and eventually an internal discussion ended up in him staying and the party chairman quiting. Our small group, emboldened by this success, started to push for internal debate, which ended a year later in a party broad discussion on our future, also writing a new declaration of principles. I would like to believe that our critical input was of relevance. In the committee that wrote the principles several members of Kritisch GroenLinks were present, me included. We pushed for more social themes as political priorities, as a way to balance the left liberal course of Femke Halsema, then party leader. As these things goes, we got a compromise text. But, by first time in history, we formally decided that diversity should be the third pilar and political priority of our party, after “red” and “green” issues. I considered that a success, and call it quits.
But my fellow Kritisch GroenLinksers keep pushing for a leftier positioning of our party. They radicalize and finally, at least in my eyes, were defeated in debate in the party congress of 2009. Their demise was left to the hands of the then chairman of the young wing of our party, a relatively unknown young man, Jesse Klaver. In an histrionic presentation he claimed that there had been enough internal debate, that it was time to join forces and get elected. Kritisch GroenLinks was framed as a group of old fashioned left wing activists, always complaining, and that was that. Klaver got a job as personal assistant of party leader Halsema, in the next election got himself elected in the parliament, and nowadays is the party leader himself. From Kritisch GroenLinks not much was heard ever again.
Until past week, that is. More than a decade after the events here relayed happened, we got a manifest, signed by A New Kritisch GroenLinks. In an almost exquisite reverse of history, the main organizer is the chairman of the young wing of our party. In a not so elegant turn, her main collaborators are figures of the old Kritisch Groenlinks group. Are we really looking at the repetition of an old discussion? At first sight, it does looks like. The current manifest recognizes the inspiration of the previous Kritisch GroenLinks, and most of the proposals that are written are indeed no different than the ones made more than a decade ago. A call for more internal democracy and a radical left wing course, whatever that might mean. Interestingly enough there is also a call for more diversity in our midsts. Which, ultimately, is why I did not oppose that a group I form part of today (which lobbies internally for more connection with societal currents like the BLM movement) signed to support the manifest. But I am not so convinced of the political future of the whole thing.
One of the most recognizable elements is the call for increasing party democracy. But this manifesto does not recognize that party democracy, as any other form of democracy, needs strong party members, willing to invest plenty of time and energy in understanding and evaluating the political course that our elected politicians take every week. The lack of such members was what lead the elimination of the internal organs that we had, meant to control the actions of our elected politicians. We used to have a group of about 100 elected representants from the whole party, that meet monthly to evaluate our own politicians. But it was an impossible task. The rhythm and depth of the debates in the parliament are simply not to be followed by persons that are not employed to do so, so we end up having shallow debates, easily controlled by the politicians that we were meant to control and evaluate. Nobody that participated in the old partijraad misses it. And the manifest of the New GroenLinks does call for something like that partijraad, but does not said what precisely. It is easy to call for more party democracy, but is a lot harder to create a proposal that actually will increase democracy.
The other criticism that sounds weird at the first look and then is pretty harmless at second look is the claim that the party has allowed itself to be lead by a “government participation strategy”. To me this is one of the most weird sentences of the whole manifesto. What do they expect? That we are a party that actually does not want to participate in government? Of course, it is implied that we want governamental power “too much”, that we have perhaps sacrificed our ideals, in order to become palatable to other parties so that they might choose us as coalition partners. Alas, nothing concrete is said here over neither, so we are left with a vague criticism of power greed. Which is a claim that is objectively hard to substain. As I said before, we actually do have guvernamental power in plenty of cities, and that has allowed us to further our political agenda. And, from the two times that our party took part in negotiations to form national government, our leadership stepped out due to, actually, our ideals.
To say the last, but not least, there is a fundamental problem with repeating criticism made almost a decade and a half ago. Time has passed. It is true that back in 2007 the electoral share of GroenLinks was meager. It is also true that there was an ongoing ideological debate, between lefties and liberals. But in the meantime, the now vilified Klaver did bring votes without precedent. In the elections of 2017 we went from 4 to 14 seats in the parliament. And there isn’t any ongoing debate on the ideological identity of our party. To bring back the criticism from them to today does not brings us closer to solve, let alone identify, the problems that we face right now.
And problems we do face. If anything, consider that GroenLinks has, formally since 2009, but since long before, called for more participation of diverse groups in politics. But we totally missed the BLM movement. We did not see it coming, and we did not participated in it. We are at the front of the creation and implementation of environmental policy. But in inclusion policy we have a long way to go. In many aspects we have been left behind by societal movements like the BLM, or new parties like Bij1. Yet even here the solutions offered by the New Kritisch GroenLinks are far from satisfying. “change the culture of the party” “invest in diversity trainings” “support internal diversity networks” and “guarantee that by each decision diversity is supported”. From these four core proposals, the first is a mere wish, the second calls for a very fashionable in a boardroom but hardly effective resource “the diversity training”, the third calls for already existing networks, and only the fourth, mentioning quotas, offers some hope, even knowing that quotas are heavily distrusted and debated mechanisms of inclusion.
So indeed, our party needs change. But it is not the opinion of this convinced (and frequently kritisch) GroenLinkser that the people behind the New Kritisch GroenLinks is capable of deliver it.