Peter Mertens (politician)

Peter Mertens

Peter Mertens (born December 17, 1969 in Antwerp ) is a Belgian publicist and chairman of the Partij van de Arbeid (PVDA).

Life

youth

At the age of 18, Peter Mertens and Marc Spruyt founded the association 'Studenten tegen Racisme' (SteR) at the University of St.-Ignatius Antwerp. Around 1991 he joined the MLB (Marxist-Leninist Movement), the student association of the PVDA, to fight against the Gulf War. With this organization, he was involved in various student activities, such as the solidarity movement on the occasion of the closure of the Boel shipyard in Temse . From 1994 to 1998 he was MLB chairman. Under his leadership, the MLB took part in the educational strike movement in the French-speaking part of the country against planned reforms.

In 1994 he completed his studies with a degree in social sciences and then worked for a temporary employment agency for a year and a half as a worker for industrial cleaning companies in the canal zone of Ghent .

job

In 1995 the 5th party congress of the PVDA took place. On this he was elected to the central committee of this party. In 1998 he switched his role as chairman of the MLB to that of political secretary of the Antwerp provincial party organization. In 2002, after the 7th Party Congress, he was elected to the Politburo (now Partijbureau ). Four years later he was given responsibility for running the party.

At the 8th party conference in March 2008, he succeeded party leader Ludo Martens , who was struggling with serious health problems. As the new chairman, Mertens publicly stated that the PVDA had to more or less omit the "instructive finger" and the "big theories", announced that he intended to realign the party and distanced himself from Maoism and Stalinism .

In 2009, Mertens published his book Op mensenmaat ("In human measure") about the new direction that the party must take . A sequel appeared two years later in December 2011 under the title Hoe durven ze? ("How dare you?"). 17,000 copies of this book, also published in German in Flemish, had been sold by May 2012.

In the Belgian local elections in 2012, he was the top candidate for Antwerp City Council. He was elected with 8,976 preferential votes . This put him in fourth place on the popularity list of Antwerp local politicians, after Bart De Wever (N-VA), Patrick Janssens (sp.a) and Filip Dewinter (Vlaams Belang).

Fonts

Flemish

• De Belgische vakverenigingen tijdens en na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Gent, 1993)
• Het fascisme gisteren en vandaag (EPO, 2000) Herwig Lerouge, Peter Mertens ea ISBN 90-6445-202-4
• De arbeidersklasse in het tijdperk van de transnationale ondernemingen ( Imast , 2006)
• Op Mensenmaat (Stof voor een socialisme zonder blauwe plekken) , (EPO, 2009) ISBN 978-90-6445-507-0
• Hoe durven ze? (De euro, de crisis en de grote hold-up) (EPO, 2011) ISBN 978-94-91297-13-7

German

• How dare you The euro, the crisis and the great raid VAT Verlag André Thiele , Mainz 2013 ISBN 978-3-95518-003-4
• The millionaire tax and seven other brilliant ideas to change the world Neue Impulse Verlag , Essen 2015 ISBN 978-3-910080-83-6

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mertens, 38 years: Peter Mertens: De mens achter de functie  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; PTVDA ; February 26, 2008  
2. ^ 'Peter Mertens nieuwe voorzitter PVDA' ; De morning ; February 22, 2008
3. ↑ De Morgen: 'PVDA complains no longer than extreem leftse partij' ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; PVDA; February 22, 2008 
4. ↑ 'Communist writes bestseller' ; De Standaard ; January 21, 2012
5. ↑ Uitslagen gemeenteraadsverkiezingen 2012 - Antwerp ; Vlaanderenkiest.be
6. ↑ Het onverhoopte succes van Peter Mertens ; Radio 1 (Flanders) ; 17th October 2012