Right-wing anti-immigrant party rebrands as ‘Yellow Vests Australia’ ahead of elections
Admitting that they have “struggled” with getting public attention, a right-wing political party in Australia has come up with a good scheme to pull in votes: Granting themselves the moniker of France’s Yellow Vests.
The rather small political organization, previously known as the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA), triumphantly reported on Tuesday that their name change came had been approved by the Electoral Commission just in time for elections next month.
In a video rather bluntly titled “We're Yellow Vest Australia”, Party President Debbie Robinson explained the motivation for the conservative group’s name-change.
Australian Liberty Alliance has… struggled with getting publicity. People think we’re the Liberal party!
While renaming themselves in honor of the broad based French movement that has united people from across the political spectrum in opposition to President Emmanuel Macron will likely not help clarify who they are to the Australian public, it certainly might help them more recognition.
Like other countries around the world, Australia has its own small home-ground version of the Vests, who even held a day of nationwide protests last January. While never achieving the kind of critical mass the movement has had in its native France, the name itself is undoubtedly well known by the Australian public.
Robinson continued saying that the Yellow Vest movement “represents disgruntled voters, who are concerned about globalism, immigration, the cost of living,” sentiments her party wants to take “from the streets, into parliament.”
“It's a simple symbol, everybody can relate to Yellow Vests,” she explained. While not making much of an effort to justify why her party in particular should be the one to officially bear the name of the protest movement, she did point to the fact that the symbolic Yellow Vests cost only 9 dollars “which is a lot cheaper than printing T-shirts that say ALA on them...” So at least the choice is frugal, right?
The party will be the first in the world to take the name, considering that the actual Yellow Vest movement in France has been careful not to associate itself with any specific political group. While some Vests have toyed with the idea of forming their own party, including floating a candidate list for European Parliament elections in May under the moniker Citizens’ Initiative Rally (RIC), these attempts have been met with massive backlash from other protesters and been more or less rejected.
Also on rt.com Yellow Vests group gears up for European elections, gets under fire from their own comradesAnother Yellow Vest offshoot party called Les Émergents (the Risen) has ultimately had to distance itself from the protest movement in its bid to obtain more formal political power.
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