On the manifest: is it a minority opinion? (3)

Well, this third comment closes my comments on the comments on the manifest. (notice that english is not my mother tongue: there got to be better ways to say that). After, I'll be able to write my own opinion on the kritiek manifesto. But now, is this the product of a sour minority inside groenlinks?

Actually, for all what it matters, they might be a minority in groenlinks. Or not. We will never know. What is a fact is that the 250 people that ended up signing the text are bothered and are a bunch. I have seen congresses with more or less the same people in the hall. What I understand as the real good thing that this manifest is, is the (very) strong signal that it gives. To dismiss it as the product of a club, or a minority club, or a minority bothering club, is to be blind.

The last post of Kathalijne is a good example of the point that I want to make here. She refers (rightly so) to the Europa werkgroep as an example of a groenlinks instance in which party members are well involved in the decision making. But hey, the europa werkgroep, with few others, are exceptions. If you make the rounds of the landelijke werkgroepen of groenlinks you will hear very many different things, but you will also hear a undertone of dissatisfaction. In one way or another the life of groenlinks has created a feeling of exclusion in quite some of our members. And accordingly, those members kick back now and then. Many of the bizarre decisions of the partijraad, or the congress, are due to a pure and simple feeling of... revenge. Of impotence against “the powers that be”, which apparently take decisions without involving the achterbaan.

Even Christian Jongeneel, one of the more critical persons regarding the manifesto wrote “Het zou fijn zijn als GroenLinks weer de sfeer terug kon vinden van de Kosovo-discussie”. So yes, there was another sphere that is to be regained. To quote again: “toen er uiterst fundamenteel van mening verschild werd - veel dieper dan nu - maar het integere imago van de partij juist een grote impuls kreeg vanwege de waardigheid waarmee de meesten zich uitten.”

So the point, at least for me, is not that the writers and supporters of the manifesto are a minority. Or a majority for all what matters. Irrelevant. What matters is that somewhere along the line they changed from disagreeing people to upset people. And that is a problem that we all have to solve. So let's not shoot the messenger, but see if we can do something with the message. Even if we don't like the messenger.

And about the message... this GL-ogger goes to bed, so it will be tomorrow...