Two very different elections in two different continents and countries took place, but there was a common thread between the two.
One was a general election in a European country, Portugal, and other, a student union election at a university, Jawaharlal Nehru University, in India. On the face of it, the victory of the Left in both elections is the common element. That is certainly true. But if we probe further, we can identify many more important commonalities.
The Left has scored a very impressive victory in Sunday’s general elections, thus repeating and improving upon its own victorious performance in Portugal in 2015. When the Left first won an election victory there in 2015, right-wing parties were in ascendance all over Europe. The Left managing to build a winning bloc that year reflected in the fashioning of its electoral and political strategies, especially in that period of the right-wing upsurge.
The 2015 general elections did not produce a clear winner. The centre-right party which previously controlled the government lost the majority, though it still managed to win more seats in the parliament than any other party. The main opposition party, the left-wing Socialist Party, was the second biggest party but did not have a majority to make a claim to form the government. However, there were several smaller left wing and environmental parties who won a good number of seats. The parliamentary arithmetic was clear that if the Socialist Party was able to form an alliance with the other left wing and Green parties, that alliance would command a clear majority to form a government.
Forming that alliance was, however, not easy. All the smaller left-wing parties did not consider the main socialist party to be left enough to deserve their support. Not only that, the smaller left-wing parties had struggled and fought against each other for decades.
Some of them had a Trotskyist background, others had an anarchist past, one was a traditional communist party that was viewed as pro-Moscow from the period of USSR. Another smaller group was Maoist in its orientation. These smaller left parties suspected each other’s ‘left genuineness’ as much as they held in contempt the socialist claims of the main opposition Socialist Party.
Sectarianism has been the hallmark of the left-wing politics almost all over the world, but it was even more pronounced in Portugal.
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Amidst this sectarianism, there was only one small party, the Green Party, which was free from this virus. It was the smallest of all the left-wing parties but was respected by all these parties as one that was genuinely committed to a left-wing programme of combatting climate change and social injustice. It was the only party which also did not have the historical baggage of having fought in the past against any of the other left parties. As it emerged later, it played the critical role of a catalyst in bringing the left together.
The choice was clear: either the centre-right party, being the biggest party, would be invited to form the government or the Left parties come together under an alliance irrespective of their dislike for each other.
Portugal had suffered under the austerity programme launched by the centre-right party. This austerity programme had slashed public spending, thus undermining the public services such as health, education and pensions. The privatisation measured initiated by the centre-right party under the bailout programme led by the European Union and IMF or World Bank had benefitted sections of the private sector. The beneficiaries of these privatisation measures had funded and supported the right-wing centre-right party but the vast number of Portuguese people who had suffered from the hardships imposed by these privatisation measures voted for the left parties, to boot the centre-right party out of power.
Difficult negotiations between different left-wing parties continued for weeks. The Green Party played a very positive role in building confidence measures and overcoming sectarianism. Eventually, the deal was reached. The smaller parties would support the socialist party to form the government but would not join the government. Instead, they sought concessions in the form of ending the austerity programme and support for higher minimum wage for working people, better trade union rights and improved pension provisions for the retired.
This settlement was derided in the right-wing media as ‘geringonça’ meaning a rickety contraption, suggesting opportunism. The word has been so massively used in political discourse that it has now become a veritable part of the political vocabulary in Portugal.
Also read: There Is Much More to JNU Than Left Politics for a Hindi-Medium Student
This contraption, however, succeeded and has in fact acquired a positive nuance now as negation of sectarianism. Prime Minister António Costa, who incidentally has an Indian/Goan background, has publicly proclaimed after winning the Sunday elections that the Portuguese people like contraption.
The government led by him had done the impossible. It raised the minimum wage and improved pension provisions thus winning mass support. On the other hand, it managed to satisfy the European Union by reducing the budget deficit through creative economic policies that allowed better export and tourism earnings, and economic growth generated by higher domestic demand created by rise in minimum wage.
It was able to do what the Syriza government in Greece had not been able to do and which eventually led to the downfall of the Syriza, culminating in the right-wing parties coming again into power in Greece.
The moral of the story is that left formations all over the world need to learn the culture and ethics of overcoming sectarianism.
It is precisely this overcoming of sectarianism that led the different left groups in JNU who had in the past fought against each other to come together against the right-wing Hindutva combine and thus score a shining victory.
A similar story of overcoming sectarianism against the right-wing Hindutva forces is the victory of Left and Dalit group combine in the recent student union elections at University of Hyderabad.
Portugal, JNU and Hyderabad have one overarching commonality whose implications go beyond the limitations of these specificities. Progressive political formations opposed to the right-wing forces do not need to submerge their different identities to claim a false unity. Their different identities are a source of strength in enriching the progressive agenda of democracy, social justice and environmental protection as long as they learn to come together to defeat the destructiveness of sectarianism.
Pritam Singh is visiting scholar at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
