Back to normal?

Well now, elections are over. Local elections that is. To me, one thing is clear. In Utrecht, Groenlinks is a stable party, it does have a stable electorate. We have keep the chairs in the city council that we have got six years ago. And that is, in principle, good. But good how?. Which ideas of groenlinks keep us alive? which electorate?

The past six years has seen in NL the equivalent of a frustrated revolution. The rising of the leefbaar parties, a sort of right wing populism, has deflated itself like a pinched balloon. In our city, the party leefbar utrecht change from 14 to 3 sits. If you compare that with the 14 seats of the bigger party (PvdA) and the eight seats of the second (we), you realize that the leefbaar revolt is over. That is good news, because it seems that the inhabitant of utrecht did not find herself in the style or contents of this upcoming right wing. Utrecht remains a resonably left wing city, and Groenlinks now hopes to take part in the government.

So we can congratulate ourselves that life, political life, is back to normal. And not only. It is hard for a party like Groenlinks to be opposition. Our strenght is the good city councellor, a persons that per definition is not a populist politician, but a long term serious worker. But after six years, looks like this low but serious profile gave good results. We will likely get into the government. And there will be chances to implement the program that has been developped in the last months.

One can ask, anyway, if this is the whole history. Actually... Does the disaparition of leefbaar means that people “has returned to their senses”. Is it true then than Utrecht comes back to be a mild left wing city? Shall we go on as before? Well, not really. Another interpretation is also possible.

In principle, we can agree that the leefbar party betrayed its own agenda. Many positions used as electoral flags six years ago, were reversed in office. And, perhaps even more important, the driving figure of Fortuin is long ago gone. So without coherence in the local politicias, and whitout a charismatic figure in the national sphere, the rising right wing populism was condemned to die. Nothing that was done by Groenlinks or other left wing parties has anything to do here. They just defeat themselves.

More important, the question is if the voters of leefbaar did vote yesterday. Have they found another party that might canalize their discontent? I don't think so. The mass of new voters six years ago, of angry people that went to the urns to complain, had nobody to vote for yesterday. But they remain discontent. The question that they posed to the political establishment six years ago is still unanswered.

A vote analyst might try to contradict this line of thinking. After all, more people voted yesterday than six years ago, not less. What is interesting is that many allochtoon voters did went to vote yesterday, much more than six years ago. And polls in this sector of the population claim that they were going to massively vote for what now has become the first party in utrecht, the socialdemocrats. We can say that as much as these people remained at home six years ago, this time they came and vote. And the ones that six years ago believe had an option in the leefbaar parties, remained at home.

In any case, these are good news for Groenlinks in general, and for Groenlinks Utrecht in particular. The group of people that is to become city councillors has a strong allochtoon component. The bestuur is about to launch a project to involve allochtoon people in the local politics. So here we can be the right people at the right moment. We just have to make true the imago that we gave.

The unanswered question is what to do with the discontent. Shall we ignore it, thinking that likely this group of people will not support Groenlinks politics no matter what? That is an option, surely so. But also we can think that being now back into the government (hopefully) it is high time for Groenlinks to explore new areas. We are, after all, an party of alternatives, convinced in the power of grass roots movements and local action (and global thinking). The challengue for Groenlinks in the four years to come is to root our agenda. To root it in the people from Utrecht.