MINELRES: E-NEWS 07/07/04: Far Right's results in European Parliament
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Wed Jul 7 14:06:01 2004
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E-NEWS 07/07/04: Far Right's results in European Parliamen
UNITED and SEARCHLIGHT E-NEWS 07/07/04
Please find below an article from the Searchlight international
antifascist magazine and a statistical overview on the Far Right's
results in European Parliament Elections. The (statistical) information
below was compiled with the kind support of many organisations active
within the UNITED and SEARCHLIGHT networks.
***
EURO-ELECTIONS - July 2004
Euro-vote mixed fortunes for the hard right
Some of the electoral right-wing extremist and right-wing
anti-immigrant/ populist parties that stood in the European elections
turned out to be amongst the biggest losers, piling up derisory votes
and percentages in country after country.
The biggest loser of the pack was J�rg Haider's Freedom Party (FP�) in
Austria which saw its vote collapse from 23% in 1999 to a miserable
6.33%. Instead of having four MEPs, it will now just have one, the
hardcore extremist and co-editor of the fascist weekly Zur Zeit,
Andreas M�lzer.
In Germany, too, the fascists flopped, shipwrecked on the rocks of their
own disunity. No fewer than four fascist parties fielded candidates,
accompanied by Helga Zepp LaRouche's crazed fascistoid sect,
B�rgerbewegung Solidarit�t. Even between them, they were not able to
muster the 5% needed to elect a single candidate into the 732-seat
European Parliament.
The much-vaunted right-wing populist List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) which, two
years ago, many political pundits thought unstoppable recorded a
comparable flop in the Netherlands. Bereft of its star personality, the
late Pim Fortuyn, the fiercely anti-EU LPF resembles a punctured air
balloon. Since being in the Dutch government last year, the LPF's
support has been plunging, this time to 121,192 votes and 2.6%.
If it looks like the LPF has little future, its rival NieuwRechts has
even less, polling a pitiful 0.3% of the vote. Already, recriminations
have broken out within this unpleasant right-wing splinter group.
In western Europe, the far-right also failed to get a single candidate
elected in the UK, Spain, Portugal and Sweden where the British National
Party's (BNP) pals in the National Democrats suffered the ignominy of
notching up a vote that was "statistically insignificant". This
achievement was complemented in the accession states where extremist
parties failed in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia to get a
single candidate elected.
It could be argued that some of the far-right and right-wing populists,
at least, have been victims of their own incompetence.
After all, they had much going for them:
*widespread dissatisfaction at the convergence of the mainstream parties
* anger at the alleged arrogance of mainstream politicians
* suspicion of widespread fraud and corruption in EU institutions
* resentment at the war in Iraq
* Islamophobia and fear of terrorism
* hostility to what is perceived as the distant and top-heavy
bureaucracy of the EU
* annoyance at alleged EU invasion of the national sovereignty of EU
member states
* media-fed hysteria in western Europe about "floods" of refugees and
asylum-seekers
* a low turnout (26% average in the the accession states and under 45%
in the west)
Despite these favourable factors, the rightists were not able,
uniformly, to capitalise upon them nor, as a rule, to play a leading
role in punishing incumbent governments.
However, it was far from meltdown for all the fascists.
In Belgium, for example, the racist Vlaams Blok totted up 930,000 votes
and won the support of almost a quarter of the bilingual country's
Flemish-speaking population. Its Euro-vote success of gaining an extra
seat in the EU parliament, coupled with its successes in regional polls
held on the same day, could foreshadow an end to the so-called cordon
sanitaire with which the democratic parties have so far kept the VB out
of office.
In the UK, the nazi BNP almost matched the VB with an unprecedented
808,200 votes but this "victory" turned out to be Pyrrhic because the
score was not enough to get Griffin's hungry snout into the EU's gravy
boat.
The non-mainstream right will still be there, however, now that Robert
Kilroy-Silk's United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has won 12 seats.
Already, the party has revealed some of its incipient anti-democratic
tendencies with Kilroy's much publicised promise to "wreck the European
Parliament".
In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National polled 1,684,792 votes and
gained 9.81%. This performance is better than the 5.5% it got in 1999,
just after the debilitating split with Bruno M�gret, but it is still a
marked setback in comparison with the 16% it got in the March 2004
regional elections. However, it has increased the FN's occupation of EU
parliament seats from five to seven.
Likewise, in Italy, the fascists of terrorist Roberto Fiore and pin-up
Alessandra Mussolini's Alternativa Sociale will be filling a seat, along
side the fascist Fiamma Tricolore which had a candidate elected and
Gianfranco "we are no longer fascists" Fini's Alleanza Nazionale which
will have 9 MEPs.
In Greece, meanwhile, George Karatzaferis' toxically antisemitic party,
LAOS, gathered 249,000 votes, enough to secure it a seat in Strasbourg.
The Patriotic Alliance - between the hardcore nazis of Golden Dawn and
military junta nostalgists - were only able to garner 0.17%, however.
The only other success in western Europe was in Denmark where the
anti-immigrant populists of the Danish People's Party kept its single
seat and increased its share of the vote slightly from 5.8% to 6.8%.
In eastern Europe, it was in Poland that the anti-EU hardcore extremist
right-wing really mopped up. There the antisemitic League of Polish
families grabbed 15.92% of the vote and the ultra-right 'Samoobrona"
(Self-Defence) totalled 10.78%. These parties will now hold ten and six
seats respectively. Three other far-right formations that contested the
elections failed to win a seat.
Elswhere in the accession states, it is thought that deep
Euro-scepticism may have been a factor in enabling the For Fatherland
and Freedom/LNNK party in Latvia (4 seats) and Nova Slovenia and the
Slovene Democratic Party in Slovenia (one seat each) to win
representation in Strasbourg.
At the time of writing, far-right and right-wing populist parties will
have 57 seats in the new European Parliament. This compares with the 24
MEPs, whose politics placed them well to the right of mainstream
conservatism before the election.
Although their tally of seats has more than doubled, it is unlikely that
that their influence will do so. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether
they will be able to form a united group big enough to win recognition
as a formal group with all the access to piles of cash that that would
involve.
For starters, Fini's Alleanza Nazionale will probably want to steer
clear of the rest of the extremists and populists and some of the "new
starters" are unlikely to want to be seen as foot troops for Le Pen's
FN.
Equally, it should not be forgotten that, fundamentally, these people
are visceral nationalists possessed of narrow-minded politics that do
not lend themselves to international cooperation. UKIP and the other new
entrants could not have landed in more suitable company.
By Graeme Atkinson, European Editor Searchlight magazine
for subscriptions to Searchlight - always welcome - go to
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com//SubscribeOnline.htm
***
BRIEF: Far Right & Right-wing populists
EURO-ELECTION RESULTS June 2004
AUSTRIA -population 8.1 million
Freiheitliche Partei �sterreichs
155,856 votes
6,33%
1 candidate elected
BELGIUM -population 10.3 million
Vlaams Blok
930,700 votes
23.16% of all Flemish votes
3 candidates elected
Front National
181,000 votes
7.45% of the French - speaking community
No candidates elected
Front Nouveau de Belgique
26,000 votes
1.1% of the French - speaking community
No candidates elected
CZECH REPUBLIC -population 10.2 million
Narodni koalice (National coalition)
2,944 votes
Statistically insignificant
Republikani Miroslava Sladka
15,767 votes
0.79%
No candidates elected
CYPRUS - population 0.8 million
No known far right/right-wing populist candidates
DENMARK - population 5.3 million
Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples Party).
128,789 votes.
6.8%
1 candidate elected
ESTONIA - population 1.3 million
No known far right/right-wing populist candidates
FINLAND - population 5.2 million
No known far right/right-wing populist candidates
FRANCE - population 60.1 million
Front National [ Jean-Marie Le Pen]
1,684,792 votes
9.81%
7 candidates elected
Mouvement National R�publicain
0.32%
No candidates elected
Mouvement pour la France [Phillipe De Villiers]
1,145,469 votes
6.67%
6 candidates elected
Rassemblement pour la France [ Charles Pasqua]
291,227 votes
1.7%
No candidates elected
GERMANY - population 82.4 million
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands
241,678 votes
0.9%
No candidates elected
Die Republikaner
485,691 votes
1.9%
No candidates elected
�kologische Demokratische Partei
145,479 votes
0.6%
No candidates elected
B�rgerbewegung Solidarit�t [La Rouche movement]
22,009
0.1%
No candidates elected
Deutsche Partei
61,954
0.2%
No candidates elected
GREECE - population 11.0 million
LA.O.S. [Popular Orthodox Alarm] - George Karatzaferis
249,449
4.11%
1 candidate elected
Elliniko Metopo [National Front]
15,129
0.25%
No candidates elected
Patriotiki Symmachia [Patriotic Alliance] - nazi Golden Dawn & junta
supporters
10,543
0.17%
No candidates elected
HUNGARY - population 9.9 million
MI�P [Hungarian Life and Justice Party]
72,177 votes
2.35%
No candidates elected
ITALY -population 57.4 million
Alternativa Sociale - [Roberto Fiore/Alessandra Mussolini]
398,036 votes
1.2%
1 candidate (Mussolini) elected
Fiamma Tricolore
236,016
0.7%
1 candidate elected
Pino Rauti
46,827
0.1%
No candidate elected
Alleanza Nazionale
3,759,243
11.5%
9 candidates elected
IRELAND - population 4.0 million
No kmown far right/right-wing populist candidates
LATVIA - population 2.3 million
For Fatherland and Freedom [LNKK]
170,819 votes
29.82%
4 candidates elected
LITHUANIA - population 3.4 million. No info received
LUXEMBOURG - population 0.5 million
No far right/right-wing populist candidates
MALTA - population 0.4 million.
Imperium Europa [hardcore nazi Norman Lowell]
1,603 votes
0.59%
No candidates elected
NETHERLANDS - population 16.1 million
List Pim Fortuyn
121,192 votes
2.6%
No candidates elected
Nieuw Rechts
15,663 votes
0.3%
No candidates elected.
POLAND - population 38.6 million
Liga Polskich Rodzin - League of Polish Families
969,689 votes
15.92%
10 candidates elected
Samoobrona - Self Defence
656,782 votes
10.78%
6 candidates elected
Union of Real Politics
113,675 votes
1.87%
No candidates elected
Polish National Party
2,510 votes
0.04%
No candidates elected
National Rebirth of Poland [Third Positionist]
2,546 votes
0.04%
No candidates elected
PORTUGAL - population 10.1 million
Partido Nacional Renovador
8640 votes
0.1%
No candidate elected
SLOVAKIA - population 5.4 million
SNS-PNS alliance [Slovak National Party - True Slovak National Party]
14,150
2.01%
No candidates elected
SLOVENIA - population 2.0 million
Nova Slovenia
101,914 votes
23%
1 candidate elected
SDS - Slovene Democratic Party
76,674
17%
I candidate elected
SPAIN - population 41.0 million
Falange Espa�ola [FE]
Falange Espa�olas de las J.O.N.S [FEJONS]
Democracia Nacional [DN]
Falange Autentica [FA]
Votes:
FE 13,728 [0.09%]
FEJONS 4,308 [0,03%]
DN 6,175 [0.04%]
FA 1,990 [0.01%]
No candidates elected
SWEDEN - population 8.9 million
Sweden Democrats
28,303
1.13%
No candidates elected
National Democrats
7,209 votes
0.29%
UK - 59.2 million
British National Party
808,200 votes
4.9%
No candidates elected.
UK independence Party [anti-EU populist]
2,650,768
16.1%
12 candidates elected
By Searchlight magazine and UNITED for Intercultural Action
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