Submission of a witty bastard
There seems to be a lot of space to the right of the VVD. Here PVV, FVD and JA21 compete for your attention. These parties have a striking similarity that you will not see anywhere else in the political arena: All three were founded primarily to provide job security for the founder(s). Geert Wilders had to start the PVV because he was thrown out of the VVD fraction. Thierry Baudet started FVD on the advice of Elsevier editor-in-chief Arendo Joustra, to get rid of his money problems. Joost and Annabel started JA21 because they failed to win an internal power struggle and mud-throwing competition against Thierry Baudet shortly before the 2021 elections at FVD.
All three of these parties therefore revolve primarily around the personal interests of the founder(s). And the primary goal of all these founders is, of course, to make sure reelection is secured time after time. There must be bread on the shelf! Geert Wilders does this by being the only person in his party. He is irrefutably the sole ruler of the PVV and, without assuming any further responsibility, compiles the list for the parliamentary elections himself, where he himself is of course always number 1.
Because FVD and JA21 do accept members, they have come up with a different solution for this. The members of both parties have been castrated by statute. The board fills the electoral lists for the various bodies with loyalists as it sees fit and submits this to the general meeting of members as a hammer piece. The members have no further input in this and can only vote down these proposals in theory.
In a democratic party, members can simply dismiss a board that facilitates this kind of practice, but that is the crux. The members of FVD and JA21 are not legally empowered to exert any influence on the composition of the board. Attempts by members to have this statute amended invariably end in internal quarrels and expulsions.
For example, the board of FVD consists of the same people that you also see in the House of Representatives. More explanation seems unnecessary. JA21 is no different. Already at the first general meeting of members, the internal regulations had to go into the trash because at all costs Joost’s wife had to remain on the board.
The big difference with the so detested cartel parties is that they do, without exception, have a democratic internal structure. The power of the board is strictly separated from that of the members of parliament and the electoral lists are determined through a democratic process.
And this is not exactly a detail. It is crucial to the success and long-term survival of a political party that it is bigger than ‘the faces of the party’. A primary concern with any ‘cartel party’ is not to let the party be taken over by over-ambitious egos. Ed Nijpels left the VVD in 1986 precisely for this reason. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Board members of political parties therefore have their hands full with egos fighting each other because this is disastrous for the election results (or isn’t it, Wopke?).
Politicians of cartel parties will think twice before entering into a coalition with an internally undemocratic organization such as JA21, FVD or PVV. After all, normal ‘cartel politicians’ can be held personally responsible for the success or failure of joint government plans, but that is not possible with an undemocratic coalition partner.
No matter how badly a coalition partner performs, his re-election is already guaranteed. This inequality prevents a potential coalition from having a purifying effect, because there is no equality between the organizations of the participants.
It is therefore unlikely that sensible politicians will join a coalition with a party that is not just about the founders, but is even named after them.
