Former Speaker of the House Arib: ‘It’s terrible that his career is ending in court’

Former Speaker of the House Khadija Arib says she hates being in court to clear her name. Today was the first day of the lawsuit filed by a former PvdA MP against the Dutch State as a result of a report on inappropriate behaviour.

The board of directors of the House, the presidium said a year ago that Arib was guilty of causing a socially unsafe work environment. The president drew this conclusion from a summary of a report by Hoffmann’s research group. The researchers themselves did not discuss an unsafe work environment; they reported various events.

Anonymous complainants, including letters, said that Arib had structurally influenced the official body. Ten people said that she sometimes spoke to them with a raised voice. According to the researchers, Arib did not object to this and refused to apologize afterwards.

The former Speaker of the House filed a lawsuit hoping to have the investigation declared illegal. “I didn’t think my political career would end like this,” she said at the start of the hearing. “I’ve been trying to put everything behind me since recently, to pick up my life and go to work.” According to her, that didn’t work.

“The injustice I feel is enormous,” continued Arib. She calls it political conditioning. “So much mud has been thrown. It affects me as a person, it affects the House as an institution. And it affects the office of the Speaker of the House.” Arib also believes that she cannot defend herself against the allegations in the letters, because she does not know who sent them and because it is not clear what the exact content of the letters is.

Her lawyer, Geert-Jan Knoops, says that the board of directors of the House and the official leadership should not have started an investigation on a Member of Parliament. Only the Integrity Review Board has that authority, Knoops argues. This would make the whole study flawed. He also says that Arib kept the door open for cooperation for a long time, but she had not heard anything for six months.

Lawyers for the House of Representatives and professors who were involved in the research oppose this. They say that Arib has done its best not to receive information about the anonymous reports. She would have had the opportunity to respond to him at least four times, but she never did, they say.

They find it unrealistic that there would be a political settlement. There are eight MPs from different groups in the presidium, and they have unanimously decided that the investigation will be carried out. According to them, the complaints were so serious that there was no other option than an investigation. This was a factual investigation, they emphasize, that was not intended to punish him.

In addition, it was Arib’s own choice to leave politics, they say, because the study was not yet finished when she had already decided to leave. Arib served in the House of Representatives for the PvdA for 24 years and was chairman between 2016 and 2021.

It is not yet known when a decision will be made in the case.