Last week you could see many new MPs walking awkwardly through the House of Representatives building. That certainly also applied to the new PVV members. Few candidates after place 25 would have thought that they had a chance of actually becoming a Member of Parliament.
Geert Wilders has been relying on a select number of loyalists for years. This is partly because his PVV is not a classic party with members, internal training and selection procedures. Wilders himself decides everything. From next week he will be the nestor of the House of Representatives. The PVV members will then be in the majority in the top 10 of the longest-serving MPs.
When compiling his list, Wilders probably did not take into account the possibility that he would have to provide 37 MPs. There are 45 candidates on the list. A large number of them are already active for the PVV, in the Senate, in provinces, in municipalities or as party employees. Many candidates were also already on the list for the Senate this spring. A position in the Senate or House of Representatives can be combined with council or provincial council membership, but politicians are not allowed to sit in both Houses.
Marjolein Faber, group leader in the Senate, is transferring to the House of Representatives. Scout Gom van Strien will remain in the Senate for the time being, he is in position 45 on the House of Representatives list. If Wilders were to govern, and he also drew from his list for ministers, he could run into problems with filling all seats in the Senate and House of Representatives. If there are no more replacement candidates ready to fill a seat, seats will remain empty.
The PVV is one of the few factions to have many practically educated people on its list. From next week, for example, Rachel van Meetelen will take office, who runs a poffertjes stall at fairs and events. Reinder Blaauw is a fruit and vegetable seller and Eric Esser a metal worker.
Dion Graus
Hardly any Member of Parliament has spent as long with Geert Wilders as Heerlen resident Dion Graus (56). The two have known each other since Graus made a documentary about the PVV leader as a television maker in 2006 under the title ‘Wild, Wilder, Wilders’. Wilders then offers him a place on his party’s list.
Thanks to the efforts of Graus, who calls himself ‘the last Limburg knight’, animal welfare becomes a spearhead of the party. In agricultural debates, Graus is firmly opposed to factory farming. The first Rutte cabinet, with tolerable support from Wilders, introduces an animal police. The service, referred to scornfully as ‘guinea pig police’, never got off the ground and died a silent death after the fall of the cabinet.
In recent years, Graus has mainly been in the news due to suspicions of violent crimes. Graus is said to have exploited his ex-wife by encouraging her to have sex with his security guards. He also allegedly presented her to security guards at the House of Representatives. NRC has inspected and listened to documents and material that would show this. Ultimately, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) did not prosecute because there was insufficient usable evidence.
Graus was also discredited in 2006, before he took office as a Member of Parliament. His first ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend previously reported him for abuse, stalking and threats. The Public Prosecution Service dismissed those cases in 2003 due to a lack of evidence. Wilders has continued to support Graus in recent years, although the Heerlen native fell lower and lower on the list after 2006.
Marjolein Faber
The PVV has a faction leader in the Senate who can compete with the party leader in the House of Representatives in terms of extreme statements and positions. Now Wilders’ confidante Faber is joining the House of Representatives faction. She will leave the Senate and her seat in the Gelderland Provincial Council.
In recent years, Faber has been vocal in the Senate about Islam, the climate and asylum seekers. As she once said in an interview with the Gelderlander: “A mosque closed is a mosque closed. Borders closed means borders closed. There is no nuance to it.” But after the elections she also expressed a slightly milder tone about Islam. Like her future group leader, she says she now finds socio-economic issues more important. “We have nothing against Muslims. We have something against the ideology.”
Last year, Faber was excluded from a meeting in the Senate for a day after she accused the cabinet of betrayal by calling them a ‘fifth column’.
In 2015, Faber was reprimanded by Wilders for having her son create and update the websites of the PVV faction in Gelderland and the Senate for thousands of euros. According to Faber herself, there was not much to worry about, because her son’s business partner had done the work. Wilders called the incident ‘awkward’ and said he did not want to hear of ‘those kinds of jokes’ again.
Martin Bosma
Long before the inclusive Omroep Zwart saw the light of day, there was already Colorful Radio. The station called itself ‘the only national multicultural radio station’ and was happy to promote that. “We are multicultural,” the proud director told this newspaper in 2002.
That director was Martin Bosma. Yes, that Martin Bosma, a PVV MP for many years now. After a journalistic career for NOS and RTL News (and a foray into Colorful Radio), Bosma joined Wilders’ team around 2004. He had just left the VVD faction and would shortly afterwards found the Party for Freedom.
Bosma (59) became one of the most important players within the party. He belongs to the group of nine politicians who first entered parliament on behalf of the PVV in 2006. Bosma is seen by many as a party ideologue: he is often involved in campaigns and contributes to Wilders’ speeches.
On social media, Bosma speaks genuine PVV language, in which he does not shy away from provocations and insults. The MP is, among other things, strongly in favor of (the return of) Zwarte Piet, and is extremely critical of ‘left-wing’ journalists.
In the House of Representatives, Bosma is mainly known as second vice-chairman. He is praised by friends and foes for the way he leads debates, but despite repeated attempts he never became Speaker of the House.
Fleur Agema
Like Martin Bosma and Dion Graus, Fleur Agema was also elected as a Member of Parliament for the PVV in 2006. It was not her first political encounter, Agema (47) had previously been politically active for the Lijst Pim Fortuyn for several years.
Agema can also be counted among Wilders’ confidantes. As a parliamentarian, the politician has always been concerned with healthcare. Prior to the last House of Representatives elections, she submitted a bill, together with the BBB, for the return of nursing homes.
If the PVV does indeed enter the cabinet, and the party has never been so close to that before, Agema would like to become minister of health, she has hinted several times. “I have been thinking about how healthcare should be organized for seventeen years,” she told Trouw on Wednesday evening, immediately after the election results became known. “That makes my heart beat faster.”
She has already received the approval of her party leader. “She would be the best minister of health care we have ever had,” Wilders said a few weeks ago on Today Inside. “If anyone really knows everything about healthcare, it is our Fleur.”
In 2004, Agema started a relationship with PVV member Leon de Jong – then a councilor in The Hague, later her party colleague in the House of Representatives. They have a daughter together.
Also read:
Has Wilders become a more moderate politician?
Geert Wilders has been on a mission to stop migration and the ‘Islamization of the Netherlands’ for more than thirty years. He didn’t get a leg up. But when the VVD dropped the cabinet on migration this spring, he seized his chance.
2023-11-25 16:17:00
#Wilders #confidants #among #experienced #MPs
