Socialists and greens create alliance in Antwerp

Antwerp Socialists SP.A and ecological party Groen have joined together in an alliance to run in next year’s local elections. In so doing, they follow in the footsteps of their local representatives in Ghent, which joined together in a cartel for the 2012 elections and will again for next year. Hasselt’s socialists and greens have also formed a cartel.

In Ghent, the move gave the SP.A-Groen cartel an absolute majority in the last elections, which the parties hope to see repeated in Antwerp. The port city was a socialist stronghold until N-VA swept the local elections in 2012, which saw long-time mayor Patrick Janssens losing the post to Bart De Wever.

Leading the list in Antwerp next year will be Wouter Van Besien of Groen, who calls the co-operation – known as Samen, or Together – an alliance rather than a cartel. “It’s not really a cartel,” he told VRT. “It is an alliance in which other people, also outside politics, will be brought together.”

The vote to form the alliance was as good as unanimous within SP.A but saw some dissent inside Groen, where ultimately 76% of members voted in favour. Former Groen president Mieke Vogels is an opponent of the alliance, she told VRT. “I’m not pro-cartel in general,” she said, “and I’m not at all convinced by the particular platform at the centre of this alliance. I find it weak, a bit of a grey area.”

Groen voters, she said, “need clear standpoints, and they are in favour of what Groen stands for. It’s not a good idea to make such compromises before the elections in this kind of alliance”.

Photo Courtesy VRT