Editorial from KP24, November 24, 2001
The national elections on November 20 have been called "the big shift
to the right". That is a qualified truth even though Denmark got a Prime
Minister of the Liberal Party, and this party together with the Conservatives
can now govern by solely using the votes of the far-right Danish People's Party.
More than anything else, the result of the elections showed the popular rejection
of Social Democratic Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and his government.
This government was rejected, following its almost nine years of EU-dictated
policies, its attacks on welfare, its rose-coloured idealisation of Denmark's
situation, its constant breaches of faith, and most recently its role as the
most loyal of all American allies in the brutal and dirty US war adventure in
Afghanistan.
Nyrup Rasmussen is out as Prime Minister, and he will end his days as party
leader as well because the Social Democrats have not been carrying out a policy
benefiting the working class and the great majority of people. This is the main
reason for the Social Democratic election defeat. The twentieth century has
been called "the century of the Social Democratic Party". After the
first election of the new century, the party is no longer the largest political
party in Denmark. The election reflected the crisis of the Social Democratic
Party, a crisis that has affected its small Social Democratic supporting parties,
the Socialist People's Party (SF) and the Unity List (Red-Green Alliance).
In the editorial of KP2, January 27, entitled "Panic before Closing Time
in Nyrup Rasmussen's Government", we concluded: "Schlüter and
Co. lasted ten years. Nyrup Rasmussen and his retinues have already been in
power for eight years. A change of scene is coming, and this is being amplified
by the accession of George Bush as US president. The Social Democratic governments
in Scandinavia and the EU are all in difficulties. The disappointment at the
unredeemed promises has undermined the confidence in the Social Democrats as
an alternative
The weakness of the real leftist alternative, where strong Communist parties
would be a main force, causes that the natural reaction - an increased popular
current towards the left, towards the policy of class struggle - is being braked
which opens up opportunities for populist rightist parties as Pia Kjaersgaard's
Danish People's Party and for the return of the right-wing government, even
though the scandals of its last reigns have hardly subsided.
It would be wrong to claim that a new right-wing wave is on its way internationally,
but reaction is more and more catching the wind and will move forward. The social
and political polarization will become still more visible in the years to come."
By calling national elections, and thereby throwing the local elections into
the shadow of the "presidential election", Nyrup Rasmussen tried to
make parliamentary profit out of the still more coal-black and reactionary international
situation that has become dramatically worsened by Bush's US after September
11. He failed pitifully.
In order to keep power, the Social Democrats tried to adopt a number of the
key issues of the bourgeois wing, not at least regarding immigration and penal
policies. From the beginning to the end, the election campaign took place on
the ground of reaction, which shrewdly was using fear of foreigners and fanning
xenophobia.
And in order to win the premiership, the Liberal Party and its leader Fogh Rasmussen,
who until few years ago was a die-hard liberal advocating the minimization of
the state, closely followed the "welfare policy" of the Social Democrats.
The election campaign was one big orgy of election promises from all sides -
promises that will soon be put away.
The Socialist People's Party has thrown in its lot with the Social Democrats,
and also this time its hope for ministerial offices was shattered. And the Unity
List (Red-Green Alliance) was punished for its line of seeking influence with
the ruling Social Democratic Party and functioning as an alibi for the Social
Democrats. Two small Social Democratic parties by the side of the big Social
Democratic Party, and none of them with a policy defending the interests of
the working class, that is punished.
All this also affects the small Trotskyite and revisionist supporting parties
of the Unity List (Red-Green Alliance), as the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP),
Communist Party in Denmark (KPiD) and Communist Party of Denmark (Marxist-Leninist)
(DKP/ML). Now, this "left wing" will make a great fuss of the alarming
"big shift to the right", but without explaining the role of the Social
Democrats, of reformism and themselves in that shift. And they will promise
to turn over a new leaf and to strengthen the extra-parliamentary struggle -
until the next parliamentary "opportunity" appears.
The lack of a real leftist alternative, inside and especially outside the parliament, fighting a bourgeois as well as a Social Democratic government, which stand for the same fundamental policy, is shameful - not at least because there exists a real movement towards the left. This is being reflected in the anti-globalisation movement, the peace movement, the struggle against budget cuts, and in many other fields. It is this movement that is being braked by the big and small Social Democratic parties. And it is on the basis of this movement that a real leftist alternative must be built in the coming years.
November 21, 2001