Worldlog Week 22 - 2009 - Hoofdinhoud

Single issue

This week we will find out if the Party for the Animals will be the first political party in the world that focuses on animals, nature and environment to win seats in the European Parliament. D-Day is 4 June, I will update you all next week.

We were often incorrectly accused of being a single issue party when we were running for European Parliament

whereas in reality we continuously state that we are the only party to take a planet-wide approach. We even dedicated a television commercial to the theme in which we showed that we are indeed focusing on one thing: the interests of the earth.

The Party for the Animals adherents focus on one overriding interest, which means they are able to come together to fight against injustice to animals despite their different backgrounds.

This overriding interest benefits people just as much as any sparrow, frog, gorilla, illegally expelled American elk, test subject mouse or viciously hunted wild boar.

This overriding interest connects all the life in our ecosystem. It is actually the incumbent politicians who reduce this to single issue politics - they only care about westerners and their money. It is therefore worth while for everyone who spites the Party for the Animals their success in this mission to call this overriding interest into question.

Some parties can of course look beyond the interests of their own species better than others, but still the interests of other living creatures remain to most established politicians a political detail of secondary importance.

Once we had been in parliament for two years, many impatient journalists asked us: ‘What has the Party for the Animals actually achieved these past two years?’ We find it interesting that this question has never been asked with as much impatience of the eighty-year old Netherlands Reformed Political Party (Nederlandse Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, SGP). Either expectations are obviously running high, or we are dealing here with a very high level of scepticism. At any rate is clear to see that we have brought the Netherlands closer to being an animal-friendly society in two years than the SGP has bought the Netherlands closer to being a politically reformed society in eighty years - and it is just as well.

Because we do not operate from the traditional position of right against left, but from a position of overriding interest that covers much more than other political parties, the Party for the Animals enjoys a disproportionate amount of influence. al parties, the Psparties, the Psom a position of overriding interstinel of scpimals, nature and environment to wi It was obvious from our first debate after entering parliament that the Party for the Animals held the deciding vote in the question of whether or not asylum seekers who had been left too long without having their cases processed should be given free access to the Netherlands. Our standpoint in this issue was unambiguously represented in our manifesto, and because the left and right blocks had each other at a stand-off, our two votes decided the issue. That is a special position to occupy. It makes our input is highly visible and significant and it ensures that other parties see us as so much more than 'just two seats'.

Politicians from other parties often need our support in order to have the majority, giving us extra power - especially where the Party’s key issues are concerned.

We are part of an emancipation movement so we take the opportunity to support other emancipation movements, such as the fight for equal rights by lesbian co-parents (a woman who parents a child with their partner but who did not bear the child themselves) and we make our voices heard in questions surrounding gay marriage and its denialists.

Because we avoid political parochialism, because we stand apart from existing ideological trends, and because we stand for a definitive separation of church and state, the Party for the Animals can keep represent our overriding interest at the highest political level. Anyone who wants to take a stand for animals, nature and the environment, thereby ensuring a sustainable future for humans, has a place within the Party for the Animals.

We are currently the political party with the fastest growing political base, we are fighting and winning for alternatives to animal testing, a ban on battery eggs and creating a transition towards a more plant-based society. We shine the spotlight on representatives from other political parties that create the space within their ranks to let others make a stand for animals too, something that our mere presence in parliament, and the electoral threat that carries, has effected.

We are a 'Big Issue' party - not very many other parties can say the same!

See you again next week.