Groenlinks is a sucker for women... and for slow processes

On women

Well, I guess that now and then one is allowed certain level of bitterness in his own blog, so I will not surprise my readers saying that I am (a bit) disappointed with the decision of the last partijraad, regarding my candidature as international secretary. I'll have to wait for that, and Isabelle got her chance. A close call, 25 votes against 22 in the second round. The reasons why I disagree with 25 members of the partijraad is that none of the other two candidates has done any work with the international groenlinks kader, meanwhile I am busy with it since I am groenlinks member (some five years ago), and in second place, we got ourselves a partijbestuur without a single allochtoon, and with a ratio 5 to 2 women. Are these two issues relevant, or I mention them as product of my bitterness at loosing an election? Well, I think that they are at least a bit important. If we intend to give perspectives of growing inside the party to our kader, this was a bad signal from the partijraad. If we value what is the trajectory that kader people do, that was also a bad signal. And if we intend to have a society in which different groups (by gender, ethnicity, culture and so forth) participate, this was also a bad signal. But hey, so is life. Now that I write this post in a train to brussels, where by first time kleurrijk platform members will (formally) talk with our european politicians, I repeat to myself (and whoever is reading out there) that I'll go on doing “my international thing” with the kader. Groenlinks has so much to do, and so few people willing to do it, that in the long run it does not matter who sits in which bestuur, but it matters that we go on with our agendas.

On slow processes

And well, to round up this email complaining about the decisions taken by the partijraad, I''ll write my dissent with their approved motion against the commissions for the project 2008. The partijbestuur presented to the partijraad a list of 30 persons that would lead the process of making a new beginselprogram. The partijraad rejected the commissions, and called for the process to stop, go back and start again. The complains were that too many of the commission nominates (me among others, what a joke) were party insiders. Now the partijraad will decide a profile of the good member that should sit in such a commission, and hopefully in some future we will have the good representative commissions, without too many insiders.

Now, why would I disagree with such a decision? The disclaimer, of course, is that I can not be fully objective here, since I am one of the affected by the decision of the partijraad. But that being said. The partijraad has all the right to object decisions taken by the partijbestuur. That is why they are there, the most important mechanism of check and balance that we have in groenlinks. But check is one thing, and balance is another. Why the partijraad members were not able to propose some more people (or other people) to form the commissions, and keep the process going? They did receive the proposal in due time. Why the partijraad bestuur did not hear the sound of discomfort about the proposed commission that rumbled in the party (it was pretty loud, if you would care to pay attention) and had a counterproposal ready? I can only imagine one reason: the partijraad bestuur thought that rumbles would remain only that: rumbles. And they commit the same underestimation mistake that they already commit in the Pormes case. You can not tell, or show, to a whole collective, that they are not being taken seriously. What the collective does, as aptly put by several groenlinks webloggers, is to show their teeth. And that is what the partijraad did.

This is a problem. Perhaps the beginsel program process will not suffer a lot (“just” few months delay) but the party will go on suffering from this lack of attention to the more and more aggressive “normal” member. If the partij(raad)bestuur do not work hard to pay attention to what normal members put in the table, this party is going to become harder and harder to lead. And in this sort of situation, the looser will not be only the partijtop. It will be the whole party.