Former CDA members from Drenthe such as Jan Mastwijk and Harry van de Pol are switching to Pieter Omtzigt’s new party. “We are very happy that he is taking this step.”
The 73-year-old Mastwijk from Hoogeveen was in the House of Representatives for the CDA from 2002 to 2010, but canceled his membership two years ago. “Because of the way the CDA treated him.”
Mastwijk immediately registers as a member of the New Social Contract on Monday. “I support him and want to show that, but I don’t have the hope of getting into the House of Representatives,” says Mastwijk.
The 66-year-old Assenaar Van de Pol was last provincial elections on the list of Alliantie Drenthe, a party of mainly former CDA members who called themselves ‘sympathizers of Pieter Omtzigt’.
“We offer ourselves without preconditions,” says Van de Pol about the Alliance. ,,We are very happy that he has chosen to take this step because it could have been possible that he had withdrawn. We have said from the start that joining Omtzigt is our top priority.”
The Alliantie party did not win a single seat in the provincial elections at the beginning of this year, but Van de Pol was not surprised, he says. ,, Without a figurehead you don’t participate nationally, that makes sense. We tried to stimulate Alliantie Omtzigt to participate and wanted to support him, and perhaps already set up an infrastructure of an association.”
‘Hope for many seats’
The leader of the Drenthe Alliance was Bart-Jan Heine (39) from Beilen, public administration expert and chairman of the Social Christian Democracy foundation. He says in a short response: ,,We applaud that Pieter Omtzigt is participating in the elections. Important for the Netherlands. We expect many of Alliantie’s points to be reflected in his program and we hope he takes many seats.”
But things are not going well internally within the Drentse Alliantie, according to Heine’s answers. ,,Important to emphasize that Harry van de Pol does not speak on behalf of Alliantie but in a personal capacity”, says Heine.
At a national level, Omtzigt has surrounded himself with a number of politicians who were previously mainly active in the CDA, such as Overijssel deputy Eddy van Hijum, also a former member of parliament for the CDA.
That group also includes the theologian Hein Pieper, also a former member of parliament for the CDA. Pieper has become party chairman of New Social Contract. He lives in Schalkhaar, near Deventer, and is dike warden of the Rijn en IJssel Water Board. But he also has ties with the North because he was born in Nieuw-Schoonebeek and after his studies in Uithuizen worked as a pastoral worker.
2023-08-21 17:00:00
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