Ex SP senator Yildirim starts new party 02/10/2007 00:00

2 October 2007

ZWOLLE - Düzgün Yildirim, who was recently expelled from the Socialist party SP because he refused to relinquish his seat in the Senate, will commence his work in the Upper House of Parliament next week as one-man faction Solidara.

The Zwolle resident announced the official founding of his new party on Tuesday.

Together with a number of others who have resigned from the SP, residents of Zwolle, Emmen and Deventer, Yildirim will set up a party programme in the coming months and recruit members. He says he has received messages of support from people in many other cities as well.

Yildirim was elected to the Senate by preferential votes, to the dissatisfaction of the SP, which wanted to stick to the order of the party's candidate list. When he continued to refuse to relinquish his seat his membership was annulled by the party executive.

Solidara, the Esperanta world for "solidarity", will be a left-wing party, "but not necessarily socialist," says Yildirim. "We will certainly differ from the SP. Sometimes we will tend more in the direction of the PvdA, other times more towards GroenLinks. We support elected mayors for instance. In any event we will also apply our fundamental democratic principles internally, unlike the SP."

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2007]

Subject: Dutch news