The Slovenia Times

New "United Left" Expects One MEP Post

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Representatives of the Democratic Labour Party (DSD) and the Sustainable Development Party (TRS), which entered the general election in 2011, as well as the recently formed Initiative for Democratic Socialism (IDS), stressed in their addresses that they differed from other political groups, including social democrats, "that have brought us to the brink of collapse".

They are the representatives of the people and not of capital and elites, the DSD's Violeta Tomič said, arguing that the disappearance of the middle class, rise of fascism and the global food policy genocide had prompted them to take matters into their own hands.

She feels that it is time for a change in the balance of power in Europe, for a fairer Europe, which was underlined by Luka Mesec of the IDS, who said that changes in Slovenia are not possible without changes in the EU and that social democracy needs to acknowledge its death.

"Conservatives and liberals, which were changing turns in power, were using slogans about the lighthouse of Europe to merely meekly fulfil the wishes of capital, while blaming the welfare state and the public sector for the situation brought about by the crisis," Mesec said.

He wondered what those who are losing jobs, suffering because of pensions cuts, the introduction of tuition fees or higher bills have to do with the crisis.

Echoing the views of the Party of the European Left's candidate for European Commission President Alexis Tsipras, who also attended the congress, Mesec said that austerity measures merely deepened the crisis.

He said that that the 2012 measures of the Janez Janša government saved EUR 460m only to cause a EUR 700m drop of GDP.

The TRS's Matjaž Hanžek added that austerity would now be followed by a sale of everything left over in state ownership.

Hanžek said the United Left sees Slovenia's opportunities for instance in the wood processing industry, in employment in agriculture, in an increase of the country's food self-sufficiency and in the boosting of companies that were already competitive globally in the past.

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