The Role of Scouts in the Formation of Rutte IV and the Controversial Position of Pieter Omtzigt

The formation of Rutte IV continues to cast its long shadow over Dutch politics. The revelation that Prime Minister Rutte had spoken about the position of Member of Parliament Pieter Omtzigt almost led to Rutte’s departure in the spring of 2021. He stayed, but so did the disturbed relations.

The distrust of those weeks held up the formation for a long time and has never completely ebbed away in The Hague. Many questions about those first formation days remained unanswered. There is now an answer to one of those questions. It turns out that Omtzigt was talked about much earlier and more often than was long thought.

Omtzigt, who had been popular number two on the CDA candidate list, was even under discussion from day one. And it was not Mark Rutte, but his party colleague Annemarie Jorritsma who was the first to start a conversation about Omtzigt’s “untenable” position. Television program News hour received a note from an official who was present at the meeting.

Omtzigt was ‘Risk Factor’

What exactly? After the elections, in March 2021, VVD leader Jorritsma was appointed as a scout together with Kajsa Ollongren (D66). Together they would speak to the chairmen of the political groups to see how all parties had interpreted the election results and what the route to a new cabinet might look like.

Or yes, speak? “Listen,” Ollongren said in the press conference after their appointment, that’s what it was all about. The two scouts would facilitate, not set the course. “We do not steer from the content.”

Also read this article: Former scouts Ollongren and Jorritsma apologize for leaked note

That this did happen is evident from the note that News hour saw. Even before the talks with the party chairmen, the two scouts spoke with Khadija Arib (PvdA), then chairman of the House of Representatives. The two made it clear in that conversation that they wanted to take more time for their conversations, because they saw Omtzigt as “a problem”.

Omtzigt had been passed over for party leadership a few months earlier and had largely conducted his own campaign. According to Jorritsma and Ollongren, this made him a “risk factor” for a cabinet. They saw a major role for the CDA in this, despite the party’s poor election results.

However, if it turns out that Omtzigt had received more votes than party leader Wopke Hoekstra when the official result was published, this could cause hassle and instability. Omtzigt, Jorritsma concluded, was “unsustainable”.

Arib declined the request for more time. She did not think it was appropriate to talk about people and also said that as number two on the PvdA list she had not experienced any problems at all. Nothing was later reported about the conversation with Arib, nor is it mentioned in the final report of the scouts.

Scouts were unaffected

The Omtzigt minutes turned the relations in The Hague upside down. The House of Representatives aimed all arrows at Rutte. As a critical member of parliament, Omtzigt had regularly crossed swords with the prime minister and meanwhile was not well placed in the CDA, the party with which Rutte wanted to govern.

Rutte had first denied having spoken about Omtzigt, after Ollongren was photographed with a folder of documents in the Binnenhof. The passage ‘Position Omtzigt, function elsewhere’ was legible on the paper. After that, revealed formation pieces still pointed to Rutte himself: “You have to do something with Omtzigt: make a minister,” said the notes during his conversation with the scouts.

The scouts received little attention in the debate. Their memory often faltered, but the Chamber was more concerned with the prime minister. Rutte became the subject of a motion of censure that was widely embraced, including by coalition parties. Jorritsma and Ollongren remained unaffected, although Ollongren had already said behind the scenes that she wanted to resign.

The revelations of News hour now draw attention to the role of the scouts. Jorritsma has just left the Senate, but as Minister of Defense Ollongren has an important role in Rutte IV.

However, this shifting focus is not necessarily good news for Rutte. If the pressure on Ollongren to resign still increases, Rutte will remain the only one in his place.

The most obvious consequence is another: the current role of scouts seems doomed. An evaluation of the cabinet formation described a few weeks ago that Jorritsma and Ollongren had not just ‘listened’. They had tried to “bring peace,” Ollongren said. She was referring to the CDA, which was supposed to have “some kind of pivotal function”.

The extent to which the two scouts went in this regard is due to the reconstruction of News hour became clear. The Chamber would soon discuss the question of what future formations should look like. But it is obvious from these revelations that it will first be about people.