It has been said that history moves in cycles. There are moments to destroy and there are moments to create, there are moments to shout for renovation and there are moments to develop a style. Political parties are not foreign to these cycles. In the european arena there have been moments to denounce the old europe, with big words and inspiring speeches, and there are moments for making the alternative come true, the slow building of consensus and alliances. Even inside our little GroenLinks we have seen those waves. We have had the call to arms against the old left, embodied in Halsema's Vrijheid heerlijjk delen. We also have had the reaction of Kritisch GroenLinks. And we got the long toekomst project, where all these waves where to be given a place into some other groenlinks, a newer, fresher and better one.

Depending on your level of optimism, those where successful, or fully irrelevant, processes. You might read the beginselen produced already a year ago, with the corresponding political priorities, strategies and structures, and you might believe that they lead us into a better direction. Or you might compare those texts with the ones written ten years before and become aware that groenlinks have not changed much. In any case, wether you belong to the optimist or the cynic side of GroenLinks, it seems clear that we have left our identity crisis behind, and we are working for increasing our share of participation in the country's government. But you might be, even there, wrong.

How else to understand the comments of Tofik Dibi in the Trouw from few days ago? Under an apparently innocent call to change our name, Tofik questions the core idea of groenlinks: there is no possible green future without left, and no left is possible without green. For Tofik, apparently, the link between traditional left wing standpoints and environmentalists goals is one that only weights on us. Because being left is no hype no more, we better be greens. Who knows, maybe Tofik is right. Maybe what Groenlinks needs to win big in the coming elections is just a cosmetic change of name. Now, even if our party is geared for the future, the future itself remains hard to predict. But I would like to risk it. I believe that Tofik is very wrong. And I also believe that Tofik's plea not only does not help anybody, but is a pain in the ass.

The pain is one known to us Groenlinksers, and probably to any other member of an association of several thousands of persons. The group expend time and energy discussing and eventually agreeing. And then, when the discussion is closed and we expect that our politicians will carry on our plans, we discover that they think otherwise. We discover that their silence during the long work of agreeing in our ideals was due to the simple fact that they where busy elsewhere. Now we discover that they have something to say indeed, they come and propose just another principle's discussion. Why now? Why not a year ago, when we where wondering about our identity? If you wanted to change the identity of Groenlinks, Tofik, I have the infamous question of Nijhof in my mind: where where you? Why now?

And then, we have the issue of being wrong. Tofik is wrong to believe that a change of name will bring back to us all these electors that we loose in the years passed by, and more. Because even if for Tofik and his sympathizers the old left (that cabal of sour old men trying to save the world with their dusty and outdated ideologies) is the main reason to be concern about GroenLinks... the reality is that we are in the middle, or even at the start of a serious economic crisis. The CWI's of this country have run out of budget long ago, because they did not predict the amount of people to be left without jobs. Of all times, this is not the moment to throw away whatever remains of our left wing credentials. Because increasingly so, this country is facing a moment of economic disarray. A moment in which labor creation will be the core task of any forthcoming government. A moment in which we electors are going to ask ourselves, more than ever: what does this party have to offer me? Are they going to make my sources of income more reliable? Or not?

Faced with these question there are many answers. GroenLinks have quite some of those. But none of these answers pass by changing our name and makeup our image, or seriously eliminating the half of GroenLinks that tells, loud and clear, that our goal is a country where solidarity matters. In times of economic pain is when our politicians have to be sharper than ever explaining why green is actually needed for social solidarity... Because solidarity, that old flag of left wing politics... Is very much needed when labor is being destroyed by the minute. Let's not drop that part of GroenLinks so easily.