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A lot needs to be done before Geert Wilders from the ultra-right becomes prime minister of the Netherlands, writes Einar Hagvaag.
WINNER: But can far-right election winner Geert Wilders become prime minister of the Netherlands? It will be difficult to gather a majority among the people elected in parliament. Here from election night. Photo: RUT / Splash News / NTB Show more
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Published on Wednesday 29 November 2023 – 07:46
Uthe outcome of the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands surprised almost everyone. Not only had the opinion polls been thoroughly wrong, but also the country’s reputation as liberal and tolerant received a serious wound. The far right, the Freedom Party (PVV) with Geert Wilders as leader, came in as the clear winner. The Netherlands, which many think of as cosmopolitan and liberal, has many reactionary and ultra-conservative elements.
Wilders and PVV now get 37 seats in the Second Chamber. That is 20 more than after the election in 2021 and an all-time high. It is far stronger than the electoral coalition between the Labor Party (PvdA) and Grønne Venstre (GL), under the leadership of the former vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, which gets 25 seats. Just behind came the conservative liberals in the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) under Dilan Yesilgöz with 24 seats.
The measurements had predicted an almost dead race between Timmermans and Yesilgöz, which it almost turned out to be, but they had not predicted the two clearly behind Wilders. In advance, Pieter Omtzigt, a breakaway from the Christian Democrats in the CDA, with the New Social Contract (NSC) party stood out as “the man on the edge”, who could decide whether Timmermans on the left or Yesilgöz on the right should form a government. The party came in with 20 elected representatives.
13 years with Mark Rutte as prime minister of liberal governments is definitely over. His party, the VVD, went back under Yesilgöz from 34 to 24 members in the Second Chamber.
The election coalition of the Labor Party and Grønne Venstre advanced from the previous election and received 25 elected representatives. In contrast, the new Farmers’ and Citizens’ Movement (BBB) under Caroline van der Plas made a far worse choice than expected. They got seven elected representatives.
This leads to major changes in the balance of power in the Tweede Kamer, the Second Chamber. 15 parties now have a place in the chamber and constitute a great political diversity.
Such major changes have not happened in parliament before. The Netherlands is what political scientists call a consociated democracy, where the political-cultural families, all of whom are in the minority, have shared power and benefits for a century. Crossing dividing lines are between poor and rich, suburbs and big cities, secular and religious, Protestants and Catholics, Protestants and Reformed Protestants (Calvinists), farmers and townspeople, old-fashioned and modern, connoisseurs and pietists. Politics is the art of compromise because no party can win a majority on its own. Voters have traditionally only switched between parties that are accepted within their family.
Geert Wilders is doing well in his own party, where he is the only member and party owner. He can do as he pleases. Beyond him, the party only has supporters and voters. He must be assumed to have full control over all 37 in the party group in the hall. But becoming prime minister and forming a government becomes far more difficult. After all, he must get a further 39 elected representatives to achieve a majority. If several of the parties close to the political middle ground maintain a so-called “political quarantine” for the far right, then they have enough votes to keep Wilders out of power.
Wilders made a number of moves in the election campaign to get out of “political quarantine”. He has stopped his hateful outbursts against the “Moroccans”, which in his mouth includes more than those who come from Morocco. In 2008 he was convicted of incitement to hatred and in 2010 of “collective insult” against Moroccans. Now he says that there is no question of banning the Koran and closing the mosques. That sort of thing made cooperation with other parties impossible.
But he will restore the borders and build “dams against immigration”. He is talking about a referendum on withdrawal from the EU. And in any case, he wants “billions” and a lot of power back from the EU to the Netherlands. Climate policy is “a priceless folly”, he says. He does not hide his understanding of President Vladimir Putin of Russia and is against sending weapons to Ukraine. Some of this may resonate in some other parties, and some may not.
The person who probably changed the political reputation of Wilders among some voters on the right is Dilan Yesilgöz, outgoing Minister of Justice and heir to Rutte in the VVD. In August, she wanted to move the party somewhat further to the right than Rutte. She proposed a possible government collaboration with Wilders, among other things to slow down immigration. Thus she legitimized Wilders for the first time. Just before the election, she tried to row backwards by saying that she would not be part of any government led by Wilders. But the damage had been done, and she was not heard.
If Had Wilders brought along Yesilgöz with the VVD, Omtzigt with the NSC and van den Plas with the farmers’ party BBB, there would have been a safe majority of 88 of the 150 votes in the Second Chamber.
But after the election, Yesilgöz says she will not be part of any government with Wilders. “We want to make a centre-right government possible, but from a different role,” she says. That means standing outside, and supporting what would essentially be a government of the far right together with some other parties – whoever it might be. This has obviously put both Omtzigt and Caroline van der Plas in trouble, because it will be difficult to go along with Wilders without getting help from Yesilgöz to tame Wilders at the government table. The Social Democrats and the Greens under Timmermans are not going to help Wilders to power. What?
In the Netherlands, unlike neighboring Belgium, it has always been possible to set up a government after an election. Governments can fall after a short time, but new elections before one has managed to form a government is something that has never happened, says political scientist Tom van der Meer at the University of Amsterdam, to the newspaper El País in Spain.
2023-11-29 06:48:20
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