International

The party council of the SP has elected Lilian Marijnissen as their leading candidate for the upcoming Lower House elections. The party is pleased that Lilian wants to be our leader. Her enthusiasm and commitment are amazing and she knows what she is talking about. The Netherlands needs new, honest politics to rebuild the country and we are proud that Lilian will lead the way.

The Rutte 4 government has resigned. This is good news for the Netherlands! This cabinet has created more problems than it has solved. It is time for a new, honest government that will deal with high costs, housing shortages and health care deficits. We are ready for new elections. And that is where we need you.

This year we celebrate the fact that one hundred years ago the Dutch government introduced universal suffrage, giving all citizens officially an equal political voice. In comparison, a hundred years before that only a handful of rich men elected the parliament and the vast majority of the population had no say over the running of the country. “We want the vote – or revolution” was the slogan of the movement for a broader franchise.

The government is refusing to make serious adjustments to the ‘Sleepwet’, the proposed law extending the powers of the security services, despite the clear no in the referendum on the issue. The SP agrees that our secret services must be able to pursue concrete suspicions of terrorist activities, but not with the collection of random data from innocent people. Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren has renewed her promise that the security and intelligence services would apply the law with caution, but has refused to remove their right to collect random data in the ‘sleepnet’. This undermines any faith in government promises and completely ignores the voters’ ‘no’.

What will Interior Minister Kajsa have seen when she looked in the mirror this morning? A politician belonging to centrist liberals D66 who has sold her soul to have her own ministry?  Or one of Prime Minister Mark Rutte's hench(wo)men, who wants to deprive citizens of a democratic right, without people being given any chance to have a say in the decision? In 1848, the first liberal premier Johan Rudolf Thorbecke introduced direct elections, while under a later liberal premier, Pieter Cort van der Linden, in 1917, we saw the introduction of universal manhood suffrage.  Today, however, liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte wants to abolish a democratic right, by putting an end to referenda. Rutte is not prepared to defend the measure himself in Parliament; the job will be left to his right-hand woman, Kajsa Ollongren. This is a dark day for democracy, a day on which citizens will be deprived of a democratic right. And why? What have people done wrong? We said 'no', in a referendum on the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement. Just once, we said 'no' to our own government; against the interests of the multinationals and of the Europhiles in Brussels. Just once, we said ‘no’ on behalf of our own democracy, so we must now be punished. That's why an end must apparently be put to the referendum as quickly as possible.

“The future is not for predatory capitalism, but for the people. The future doesn't belong to the market, but to us. Together we will fight for a world where it isn't the interests of the few which count, but those of us all.” This was the theme of Lilian Marijnissen's speech to the SP Congress, her first since she became the party's leader late last year.

SP leader Emile Roemer addressed Parliament today, giving a detailed critique of the new government’s policies and continuing to outline those of the SP and the left opposition. Naturally enough most of this critique concerned domestic policies, but Roemer also touched upon a number of matters with an international dimension.

On March 15th 2017, the Dutch parliamentary elections resulted in 14 seats for the SP, of which 6 are new entries into the parliament. The party is now the largest one on the left.