Speaker of the House of Representatives Vera Bergkamp is not at all pleased with the course of the recent cabinet formation. “If you compare this formation to Netflix, then Netflix is boring. This was not worth repeating and just embarrassing,” she said in the television program WNL Op Zondag on NPO1.
Bergkamp received the final report of the formation last Saturday from formateur and intended Prime Minister Mark Rutte. In addition, she informally informed him that “it has taken far too long and that it cannot be repeated”. She will therefore have the process thoroughly evaluated.
Bergkamp: “If you look at the confidence in politics at the moment, it is at an all-time low. Then such a long formation will not help. If you compare this formation to Netflix, Netflix is boring. It is dramatic how a Member of Parliament was discussed with ‘function elsewhere’, dramatic how the debate about this went in April, resulting in a dramatic crisis of confidence.”
The President of the House was also quite frustrated with how the information was provided to the House of Representatives during the process. “I then ask the informants about the progress. They do their best to answer that, but that is often so general. And then you read in the newspapers that they have more information from sources in the negotiating groups. That’s embarrassing.”
King in the formation
Last Christmas, Mark Rutte told De Telegraaf that it did not help him that the king was removed from the formation. Bergkamp: “There is nothing wrong with dreaming about the past now and then, but we will never know what the effect would have been. I don’t think the king would have made any difference in this deep crisis of confidence.” However, the President of the House is open to all proposals that speed up the process. “Just taking the king out of the process doesn’t mean all the holes are filled. In any case, I want to have it properly evaluated and that evaluation will be ready before the end of the year.”
By: Editors
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