‘Dutch privatization consumption’. It can be read on one of the many protest signs at the start of the SP campaign in Amsterdam’s Beursplein. The sign sums up the party’s message on the way to the farmers’ elections.
The Socialist Party hopes the tide is on its side and reverses an old action position: it has always been against privatization (including energy companies). Now they want it to be nationalized again.
Party leader Marijnissen says it’s a relevant point at a time when energy prices are high. “We want to reduce people’s energy bills, and we can do that by reducing profits,” he says. “But then you have to be in control.”
There is nothing to say
Because we no longer have them, says Senate party leader Tiny Kox. “We have nothing to say about our energy supply,” said Kox, who is currently the parliamentary group leader in the Senate. “Big companies decide whether we can buy energy, how and at what price.”
To the dismay of SP, this means that billions of taxpayers’ money will flow from the energy blanket to commercial corporations. This should change and go back to how it was before the energy companies were sold over the last few decades.
Many of these companies were in the hands of municipalities and especially provinces at that time. SP gets the feeling that more people want to go back to that time.
boo
The party’s petition, entitled ‘cut costs, nationalize energy’, has been signed nearly 120,000 times, and Marijnissen says the party has gained members in recent months. “The tide can turn,” he says. And this is also necessary for the SP, because since Marijnissen was at the top, the party lost all the elections.
It won’t be the fault of hundreds of fans who are often fined by SP. “Get energy from the market” and related slogans are often read on protest signs, and all references to “market forces” and “markets” in Marijnissen’s speech are consistently greeted with boos.
The SP still needs to convince the rest of the Netherlands before the state elections on 15 March.
Source: NOS
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
