News from the Periphery of the World. Party of the Radical Left - founded in Serbia

[Milos Uzelac]

https://www.transform-network.net/blog/article/party-of-the-radical-left-founded-in-serbia/

The new party resulted from the transformation of the Social Democratic Union (SDU) – a process in which student movement activists participated as well as members of the Left Summit of Serbia and DiEM25 – which led to the most significant unification of Serbian left forces in the last thirty years.

The PRL (Party of the Radical Left/Partija Radikalne Levice) announced that the last SDU congress represented the end point of a process of the process of left unification in Serbia initiated in 2018. SDU members adopted the new political programme (Declaration of Workers’ Rights) and the necessary statutory changes.

According to the new programme, the PRL will ‘fight for a socialist society based on equality, solidarity, freedom, democracy, internationalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-fascism, a society in which people will be more important than profit’.

 

The congress also elected a presidency that will consist of five members: historian Milena Repajić; sociologist Isidora Aćimov; playwright Ivan Velisavljević, activist Ivan Zlatić and student Mina Milošević.

''We stand in favour of a radical, fundamental change of the social system and building a socialist society. In that sense, the PRL is moving the political spectrum in Serbia to the left'', member of the presidency Milena Repajić, stated for Mašina.

Ivan Velisavljevic, another member of the PRL presidency, says that the new party is close to the members of the Party of the European Left:

Especially those in the region, such as the Workers’ Front from Croatia and the Left from Slovenia, as well as other workers’, left, eco-socialist and so-called red-green parties around the world.

Repajić and Velisavljević explained that the new party will not wait long to show the public what it stands for:

''Literally this morning we joined forces with the Joint Action Roof Over Your Head on preventing an eviction in Dalmatinska Street in Belgrade. We are simultaneously preparing the forming of all governing bodies, says Velisavljević.

Now that the party is founded we finally have a clear political articulation of the struggles we are waging in the form of the new Programme and the Declaration of Workers’ Rights, which we will present to the public'', Repajić explains.

The PRL programme indicates aspects of political struggle to which this party aims to contribute:

''We will work in favour of Serbia being a secular republic in which dignified work free from exploitation, a roof over one’s head, healthy food and environment, free healthcare and education, gender equality and minority rights are guaranteed.''

 

I.K., M.M.

Translation from Serbian: Iskra Krstić

[Apparition of Jack]

Nice, I wish them luck

[Opo]

@Milos Uzelac Why did they put radical in the name? I think it will just slow their growth. 

When do you think Serbia will be ready for them to win the presidency? 

[Hatfort]

4 hours ago, Opo said:

@Milos Uzelac Why did they put radical in the name? I think it will just slow their growth. 

When do you think Serbia will be ready for them to win the presidency? 

Agreed, any party with radical on the name is born dead. They will have a number of loyal followers, but people, in general, won't support them, just for the name.

Providing rights and a decent life to people must not be radical, it must be common sense.

[Milos Uzelac]

4 hours ago, Hatfort said:

Agreed, any party with radical on the name is born dead.

Yes, that may seem on the outset from a glance, but in Serbia's political context and tradition, in the past thirty years (and even in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning 20th century), one of the three actual largest parties in the past three decades, in terms of gained votes each election, support among the electorate and parliamentary share of delegates, since the institutionalization of multiparty elections in the '90s, had the name Radical in it and was called the Radical Party (e.g. ''the Serbian Radical Party'') and the name radical became associated with them in popular discourse (not to necessarily mean fringe or beyond the pale of acceptable, but to mean a sort of people's will and being an avid patriot, nationalist, etc.) and the party supporters and leadership were often nicknamed ''the radicals".

(In fact, the current ruling party leadership and a lot of their other lower officials and members, that have currently a pretty strong grip on power over the government and adjacent key institutions, were former Serbian Radical Party higher-ups and officials, that left that party and went on the form their own party, then rebranded themselves with the name "progressive" in the middle ("the Serbian Progressive Party"), but fundamentally saved a lot of the same or similar policy positions in most areas and approaches to domestic and regional politics, even though they are more subtle about it and not explicit and open about it as the radicals were.)

So in terms of our political discourse, the word radical has different connotations and a different popular imagination that goes behind it than in some other countries. And has to do with the peculiar history of this region and it's general position and status in international affairs. It may seem to you, if you live in a developed country, with a continual tradition of competition for power between more traditional and longer-established parties (e.g. the various derivations of Liberals, Conservatives, Social-Democrats, Green Environmental Parties in most Western countries), that compete within a frame of what, was till now traditionally acceptable within moderate electoral politics and moderate policies (often in the context of internal national politics, and not so much in regards to foreign policy), that a party that is competing for electoral power  with the name radical, suggesting some radical shift in approach in terms of established political conduct, regimes, and culture, might not be able to gain any meaningful power or survive as a party in that environment. 

But here the discourse is different and the way power is organized is more centralised and in the few main larger cities and the capital of the country (which alone holds about one-fifth or one-sixth of the population of about 7 million people), and party names and party programs they are used to hint at, are used to signal much more about foreign policy positions than domestic in a lot of cases (as is very often the case with developing, neocolonial (in terms of economic dependence and lack of sovereignty over some areas political decision-making) countries that are on the half-periphery of the current global power distribution system) and to hint at the of what direction of the alignment towards blocs of geopolitical and global economic power and influence should the country be most oriented towards in striving to work on and cultivate deeper cooperations, relationships and dependence (e.g. the West or the East, the NATO Alliance or Russia and China, America or China, etc.).

9 hours ago, Opo said:

@Milos Uzelac, Why did they put radical in the name? I think it will just slow their growth. 

One of their aims, I speculate, from reading their programs, policies, and agendas on their Facebook page and other sites, is to as well try to return the term radical (''meaning aiming at changing the foundations at the way things are or shifting the foundational aspects of a current system") in Serbian popular political discourse in a different veneer and context, that's more truthful with the term's actual meaning,  and re-take it from former political parties that became associated with that name and misused it for another purpose, and have people associate the word radical now in political discourse in Serbia with the left-wing or with the real social-democrats, instead of the former ultra-nationalist party (that is now marginal in electoral politics) that went with word radical in it's name and that has now through its former higher-ups rebranded itself, even though it's a different party, in essence, it's the radicals former leadership that has formed it, as ''the Serbian Progressive Party".

9 hours ago, Opo said:

@Milos Uzelac 

When do you think Serbia will be ready for them to win the presidency? 

Their first main aims and goals that are in their immediate first focus, is for them to get some actual opposition delegates into the parliament and to free it up for some actual political opposition voices since there exists no actual opposition in parliament as of now, it's compromised of the ruling "progressive" party delegates, that has the majority of seats in parliament, from gaining 60% of the vote (of the about  40% election turnout rate among the whole population) in the last parliamentary elections across the country held in July, and can essentially with that majority form their own government without needing any other party to be in coalition with it. However, in order for them there to retain a veneer, of multiparty competitive democracy, and not appear to be an overt one-party state rule political party and get called on the legitimacy their rule internationally, they have included a newer tiny "parasitical" party [and also probably connected, I speculate, by some shared investment share or other shared economic interest], with no concrete policy deviations from the ruling party or a hint of actual resistance and holding them accountable, and few slightly larger more traditional parties to form and have an international appearance of a multiparty coalitional government, that have in Serbian political life for the past 20 years existed for serving that purpose - being a party for forming coalitions with and governments with whatever and whoever is the ruling party to retain a veneer of parliamentary democracy , and have used them to form this monolithic opposition-less parliament in order for them to have a veneer of a properly functioning parliamentary deomcracy while they de facto control, hold and surveil all other branches of government and run the whole country themselves as much as possible, as much as international, other powerful influences and global economic constraints allow.

So the main goal for them is to get the minimum census of required votes for having and getting some oppositional voices in the parliament, to have the voices of those who have been forgotten and abandoned heard in it, that mostly compromise the lower, working, and lower-middle classes andthe mostly rural parts of the country, because of their lack of resources (by that I mean social, institutional, cultural (in terms of knowledge and degrees)) in their possession, and because of their material situation, and to actually fight to have representation for them and their interest, and not leave them to be blackmailed in terms job-retention in the public sector,  bribed for better job opportunities, chances and financial benefits by the ruling party administrative complex in order to vote for them and/or because they are not part of in the membership of the ruling party voting base where the party has a strong local pressence, and in order for it not to be just convenient front for a political dictatorship from the almost all-encompassing current executive branch, headed by one man, the both the ruling, and in practice, totalitarian, party head and current president of the country for the next year, till the next presidential elections, and predetermined "FOUR MORE YEARS!"  Trump supporters chant, that is, and that has become a predetermined actuality and realization of the politics of governing of the shrunken and monolithic political landscape here.

They are not, I think, at all close, to get the votes and the support they need win the elections for the candidate they put forward for the presidential elections in Serbia, since for some time now there exists a de facto a dictatorship of a one-man and the party his the head of and heading here. The main goal is to win over a part of the parliament and to revive it to again being an actual institution for people's representation in politics, and save it from its current use as a hollow, parasitical limb for the political totalitarianism of the ruling party and dictatorship of the executive branch.

I think a heavy hard-hitting external event that has an existential threat for the stability of the country and its economy needs to happen for it to become even close to a realistic possibility in the next couple of years or a decade (like a start of climate crisis mass migration waves and refugees and immigrants settling in, from underdeveloped, poor and different culture countries, from the South, in large parts of rural or parts of metropolitan Serbia, as a result, of it).

Most of the large parts of the countries populace are still entrenched in and held together through blue consciousness (with residues of Red from it's bursting into the collective consciousness in the Civil War Era years in the '90s) solidarity, cultural cohesion, and variations of nationalist and Orthodox Christian ideologies and beliefs and there are also large parts of orange-consciousness and more rational, adaptive, educated, wealthier and well-off consumer lifestyle, and material success and individual achievement-oriented parts of the country, but with still large layers of blue consciousness residues and left-overs in them, in metropolitan areas, and Green-based consciousness is mostly present in parts in some academic institutions and in sprinkling student movements and parts of the general population, this is according to my own personal, not a lot at all experiences through various interaction and dealings with them and different parts of the country outside of Belgrade, assessment of the country.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Milos Uzelac

[Opo]

@Milos Uzelac Thanks for responding. 

Im just afraid that people will regress into red/blue if too much immigrants start coming. Fear will pull them back in the hope of finding safety in what they know. 

[Milos Uzelac]

1 hour ago, Opo said:

@Milos Uzelac  

I'm just afraid that people will regress into red/blue if too much immigrants start coming. Fear will pull them back in the hope of finding safety in what they know. 

I am having anxieties over that too.

There is especially a high probability of that becoming a possibility for this region

(due to the stage of it's relative infrastructural, cultural and collective consciousness lower tier of development on the whole of the populace, though I assume that differs from some countries over other countries in the Western, Eastern Balkans, Greece etc. (the more infrastructural developed ones, I assume are slightly more advanced in the collective consciousness on the whole average of the populace than those that are lagging behind in that area))

of movements and new leaders of them springing up, that will cater and rise on capitalizing on that immigrant and refugee fear of difference and the unknown (which was and is still, I can attest for my personal experiences, form shortly interacting with some of my relatives that lived near immigrant and refugee asylums,  present and palpable from the 2015/16 crises in some, I think though most, parts of the population here, especially in rural areas) and promising them safety and security if they start living again, thinking, and believing in the pattern of the "us vs them" mutually exclusionist binary rooted in some conspiratorial thinking that the leaders of those new movements start relying on, in order to gain power and expand their interest, and actively encourage and enforce it in being reproduced through institutions and adjacent, and controlled media houses in mainstream society. 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Milos Uzelac

[Milos Uzelac]

23 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

Nice, I wish them luck

Honestly, I as well, given the possibility of the trajectory of some future critical events unfolding in this region.

[Gidiot]

@Opo Immigration can have pros and cons but I think there should be a commiseration program in most countries or like an exchange program people can opt into from a young age to explore other cultures for some time and learn not to other people. I disagree with Slavoj zizek that multiculturalism is a negative for the world. We can all coexist but to do it without fear you need to grow up with a taste of these “ foreign “people and values, we only become fearful from ignorance. I was lucky to grow up with different cultures and exchange students in school and seeing many races so I didn’t have a prejudice but a yellow or strategist  perspective would likely be the research findings that racism/immigration fear/ultra nationalism/white supremacy/nazism is a more learned thing than just a hatred of other cultures, I’m hoping that this party will address that in some aspect, you can’t do thst by simply accepting more immigrants but actually ensuring there is healthy communities for integration into the country, I dislike the word assimilation because people should be free to be themselves and not conform to nationalism if they want, like myself I’m not very nationalistic but I have the privilege of a natural born citizen, if more natural born citizens were able to explore the world in an exchange system it is a net positive for the world if done in a healthy way, I would like to see an emphasis on a system like this. In my state of Maine we have a huge population of Somali immigrants and Chinese students coming to our schools and it has benefited my community  greatly. However the Somalis do not feel welcomed or commiserated with so they form their own communities and instantly get “othered” by  natural born citizens.  
 

With programs like this and some other things and education , the  red/blue/conformist fear would not be encouraged and we could successfully transition into solid green.

that is the goals for our lifetimes- solid green would an amazing accomplishment 
 

Just a thought haha