European elections
Few governments go unpunished
By John Catalinotto
Voters in the June 11-14 elections for the
newly expanded European Parliament showed their general
dissatisfaction with unemployment, social cuts and the Iraq war
by punishing nearly every sitting government.
Though the Bush administration ran no candidates, you could
argue that it still managed to lose these elections. Elements
in the European ruling class who decided to follow Washington
into its Iraq adventure were among the biggest losers.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party had the worst finish
of a ruling British party since 1918. Labor got only about 23
percent of the vote, finishing third behind the Conservatives
and the Liberal Party. The Labor Party did equally poorly in
local administrative elections. The only important Labor
candidate bucking the trend was Ken Livingston, an opponent of
the Iraq war who was re-elected mayor of London.
Bush's second most important European ally regarding the
Iraq occupation is Italy's media magnate Premier Silvio
Berlusconi. His Forza Italia party fell nearly 5 percentage
points short of their 2001 results, when they got 25.3 percent.
Berlusconi's prediction they would improve on that total fell
flat.
The other major U.S. ally, rightist Jose Maria Aznar in
Spain, had already lost the March 14 national elections
soundly. The Socialist Party leader Luis Zapatero, who
succeeded Aznar, quickly pulled Spain's troops out of Iraq. His
party now also beat Aznar's by 43 to 41 percent in the European
elections.
The ruling parties in Portugal and the Netherlands, two
other major Bush allies, also got trounced in the EU
elections.
Iraq not the only issue
While anyone too closely identified with the Iraq debacle
lost badly, this wasn't the only issue of concern to the
voters. First of all, many voters didn't take this election
seriously. Only 150 million voted; this is out of the 350
million eligible. Parti cipation from the new EU members in
Eastern Europe was under 30 percent.
In Poland, the biggest of the new additions to the EU, only
21 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhardt Schroe der's ruling Social
Democratic Party got only 20 percent of the votes cast, its
lowest showing since 1953. In France, Jacques Chirac's party
got only 17 percent compared to 30 percent for the Socialist
Party. These two imperialist leaders had opposed U.S. tactics
regarding Iraq, but high unemployment coupled with
across-the-board cutbacks in social programs have combined to
make them unpopular despite their "anti-war" stand last
year.
Up until about 20 years ago, there were mass political
parties whose program was openly for socialism. Now the
political parties strong enough to form a majority government
in parliament are all parties openly representing the ruling
class. It is in Europe much as it is in the United States. The
"center-right" government is one possible majority--Chirac in
France or Berlusconi in Italy for example. A "center-left"
government is an alternative majority--the Socialist Party
supported by the French Communist Party in France; the Olive
Tree coalition in Italy.
In France and Italy alike, the "center-left" coalition and
the "center-right" are both loyal servants of the ruling class.
Both "center-left" groupings in France and Italy, for example,
carried out the imperialist war against Yugoslavia in 1999.
There was some vote in some countries for parties to the left
of the "center-left," like the Communist Refoundation in Italy,
which got 6.1 percent. But with few exceptions, European
elections are much like Repub licans vs. Democrats in another
form.
Because of this, the European elections are quite limited in
how they express the workers' class consciousness. Instead, the
elections indicate more subtle changes. The clearest lesson of
the June 11-14 European elections was a rejection of U.S.
foreign policy, especially the occupation of Iraq, and mass
dissatisfaction over the economic stagnation in most of
Europe.
Reprinted from the June 24, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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