Denmark: About the election results

We publish an unofficial translation of the article of Roede Fane.

On the night of Monday, all the votes were counted for the elections to the imperialist EU. Having wasted intense resources on garnering votes to create greater support for the lie of bourgeois democracy, the representatives of the bourgeoisie were met with great disappointment. Voter turnout at this year’s EP election has dropped significantly since the 2019 election, which also had a record high voter turnout of 66.08% (which is still just under 2/3 of voters).

The turnout for this election was 58.2 percent, which is a drop of almost 8 percent compared to the election in 2019. In addition, 2.1% of the votes were blank or invalid votes, which is also a record. This means that out of the voting population, only 56.1% voted for any bourgeois party. This despite a more massive and intense campaign from the bourgeois parties and press than usual to get people to vote.

In addition to this, the parties in government in particular: the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Moderates have experienced a huge overall decline. They have only managed to obtain approximately 36% of the votes, which is a drop of more than 14 percent of the vote, if you compare with the 2022 parliamentary election, where the “majority government” was formed between the same parties. At the time, they together had more than 50 percent of the vote. This has sent the current government into its deepest crisis yet.

The EP elections have often functioned for the ruling class and its representatives as a mid-term election, and voters now reveal in many ways how the masses despise the current government in particular and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as a whole. This was, among other things, characterized by the fact that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s party, the Social Democrats, had the worst election for more than 120 years. This is a huge slap in the face to the self-proclaimed “all of Denmark’s party”.

The elections also reveal the contempt of the masses for imperialism and the EU, as the union of the imperialists with a huge decline from last year. This decline is tried to be trivialized by the bourgeois press with many explanations, but the only explanation they never come up with is how the imperialists in Denmark since 2019 have removed one right after another, from the working class and the people, how they keep fooling the people, and how Danish imperialism has continued its berserk in the world and profited greatly from genocide and the looting of the oppressed nations, such as Palestine.

So we see a progress in the consciousness of the masses and rejection of imperialism. This rejection has especially grown with the solidarity with the Heroic Resistance of the Palestinian people, against which Danish imperialism and the state have especially revealed themselves as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The proletarian attitude towards EU is quite clear. We condemn and fight the EU. We do this because it goes against the interests of our class and because it only creates more exploitation and leads to our hard-won rights being taken away from us again. This in itself leads to the intensification of the class struggle, but this cannot be used as an excuse to vote for the EU and thereby betray the interests of the proletariat and the people. Instead, we must raise the largest possible movement against the EU on a fair and correct principled basis, which does not serve to defend the Danish state, but to destroy it. This movement must mobilize the people to boycott all possible “referendums” the bourgeoisie will try to legitimize the EU and Denmark’s participation with. Such a movement is what they really fear the most, which is proven by the countless times the politicians here at home have stated that it is not decisive about what votes, but that you vote.

We believe that a boycott of the bourgeoisie’s elections and polls is the most effective and best way to raise awareness, awaken and politicize the masses, combat the democratic illusions that still exist among them, and generally advance our cause. Precisely when it comes to the EU referendums, there has been a process with a masterful lesson in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in their power and in their so-called democracy. A lesson that has just shown that we cannot vote ourselves out of the EU! Here we are of course thinking of the “No” on 2 June 1992, which, via the Edinburgh Agreement and its four false exceptions, as well as the accompanying manipulation, the fear campaigns, threats of layoffs, mass unemployment and international isolation, turned into a “Yes” on 18 May ´93, followed by the police’s repeated volleys of gunfire directly at demonstrators protesting against the “Yes” vote.

The 18th of May 1993 reveals in black and white that we were not allowed to decide whether we ourselves want to join the EU via referendums. It is therefore also naive to believe that we can in any way vote our way out of the EU on our own terms. Therefore, among other things, the project about the “People’s Movement against the EU” and its participation in the elections was doomed to fail from the very beginning.

For the bourgeoisie, elections and polls are extremely important. The leader of the Communist Party of Peru, Chairman Gonzalo, says it quite clearly: “Thus, elections are the usual method of renewing the governments of the bourgeois dictatorships of the capitalist societies, including the most democratic ones imaginable, they are the means they usually use of in their political operation to preserve and develop capitalism’ . Elections and polls serve to legitimize and justify their dictatorship. They are their democratic mask and it is this that we must tear off, in order to reveal this and develop a revolutionary movement. We must not drag the masses down into parliamentary cretinism, but on the contrary make it clear that the state cannot be changed with a ballot and that what changes hands through elections is not state power, but only government power. However, this does not mean that we should be passive in elections and polls, on the contrary, we should use them for agitation and propaganda, in accordance with what Lenin presented.

In accordance with this, the subjective forces have also won out, with several organizations choosing to boycott the electoral farce from an anti-imperialist standpoint. The revolutionary forces have also gained ground in the country with an intense election boycott campaign, which has taken place in several cities:

In Aalborg, at a Palestine demonstration in solidarity with Rafah, fliers were handed out and speeches were made , which condemned the EU as a Union of imperialists, and which agitated for a boycott of the upcoming EP elections.

The demonstration also mobilized for an upcoming film night about the national liberation struggle in Aalborg on June 19 in Café 1000 Fryd.

A banner with the slogans “EU is the union of the imperialists!” and “Boycott the election!” was hung in front of a polling station.

In Copenhagen, several leaflets have been distributed as part of the international election boycott campaign.

Several posters boycott have also been put up in proletarian neighborhoods and central locations in Copenhagen. Similar posters have been put up in several languages in other countries.

In the proletarian neighborhood Mjølnerparken, a dazibao was set up against the EP elections.

In addition, several election posters for bourgeois parties report having been sabotaged with stickers and other propaganda.

On walls in proletarian neighborhoods graffiti for election boycott has also been painted.