Fortuyn was Trump’s predecessor

• Thick Verkuil

  online publisher

Former PvdA leader Ad Melkert initially didn’t want to watch the TV series last spring Fortuyn’s year. After friends told him he was okay, he tried anyway. She hit him like a club. “The way Ramsey Nasr portrayed me was fantastic. He walks just like me, with that arched back. They always said, ‘Man, walk straight.'”

Twenty years after the tumultuous 2002 elections and the murder of Pim Fortuyn, Melkert has changed little. He looks barely aged and he still thinks the same way. He seems more relaxed, which makes for a little bit wicked humor.

For the first time he extensively recounts his experiences in the “year of Fortuyn”. He is interviewed in Haarlem by the journalist Coen Verbraak at the Historisch Nieuwsblad History Festival, with the audience present. But cameras and microphones are not welcome, because what happened then is still very high for him.

These events can be summarized as follows: Polls have shown for months that the May 2002 elections would be a head-to-head race between PvdA leader Melkert and VVD leader Dijkstal, although outsider Pim Fortuyn attracted a lot of attention. media with its attacks on Islam and ‘Purple’, the coalition of PvdA, VVD and D66 that had been in power for eight years at the time.

In early March, to the amazement of Melkert and many others, Fortuyns Liveable Rotterdam became Rotterdam’s biggest party out of thin air. That night there was a televised debate in which the victorious Fortuyn glorified, but Melkert sat grumpy and refused to congratulate Fortuyn.

The debate has become TV history; See how it went here:

Fortuyn also rose in national polls, until he was assassinated in Media Park on May 6, nine days before the House of Representatives elections. A popular anger erupted against the ‘left’, embodied in many eyes by Melkert, who from that moment on could no longer show himself in public.

Melkert had met Fortuyn once when they had to argue in front of a jury on television. Fortuyn won, because “I went for the content and he went for the effect”. Melkert thought he was someone who blew with all winds to get attention. “When he was in fashion, he was on the far left. He wrote in Marxist jargon that made you dizzy.”

Even in 2002, according to Melkert, he was content with the pursuit of the effect. “Fortuyn was eloquent, of course, and he had considerable knowledge, but he used it for effect, not to do something. He was Trump’s predecessor. They play gut.”

Melkert acknowledges that Fortuyn expressed the feelings of people who did not feel heard. “But he did it in a way that takes you no further. He started a culture war, when multicultural society is not a choice, but a fact.”

Melkert also acknowledges that he should have had the professionalism to congratulate Fortuyn in the illustrious late-night debate. But he blames the NOS and presenter Paul Witteman.

He blames the NOS for breaking with the tradition of inviting only the leaders of major national parties. “This is media manipulation.” He blames Witteman for excluding him from the grid by “asking him as a school teacher” because he didn’t congratulate the winner.

More generally, he thinks Fortuyn was made big by “excessive media attention”.

As in Fortuyn’s year you can also see, the day before the murder, Melkert and Fortuyn had a fight at the CEO. “It was emotional there. I tried to keep it flat, but it was very unpleasant.”

The next day, at 6pm, Melkert sat down with his employees in a Chinese restaurant in Amersfoort. “I was grumpy. We were in a working-class area and you felt disheartened there. We had just ordered foe yong hai when we learned that Fortuyn had been hit. A shiver went through me. I felt cold as ice.”

That evening, after the murder, he was in his room at the Binnenhof when a mob threw stones at his window. Some have tried to go up. Through secret passages he reached a car, which was attacked when the gates were locked.

However, his driver escaped. He wanted to take refuge with a friend, but when he arrived he was immediately called: “Here is Melkert!”. The next morning he woke up in a bare apartment in Amsterdam. “Then I realized that the world had changed”.

He received countless threats, but only really felt threatened when after the funeral service for Fortuyn a woman hissed, “Did you have your way now?” “I realized that she too could have had a knife.” Later the woman brought him flowers. “She apologized, she thought it wasn’t me, but Volkert van der G. Fortuyn had killed.”

Twenty years later, Melkert still doesn’t know what he or the PvdA did wrong. At most he may think he was too serious and too tense. Fortuyn’s murder is a lasting trauma for him. Every time he passes by Hilversum’s Media Park, where Fortuyn was killed, he feels tears pressing on the back of his forehead.