Volt sends Gündogan away, in the room next door sings the SGP

In the Aletta Jacobszaal, next to the large hall in the House of Representatives, party leader Laurens Dassen and MP Marieke Koekkoek van Volt had been waiting for Nilüfer Gündogan for almost fifteen minutes. From a quarter to ten, on Tuesday morning, they would meet to discuss an amendment to the group rules – whereby Gündogan would be permanently expelled from the group, this time with a legal basis. As a member of parliament for Volt, just recently, she was allowed to vote on this.

But she didn’t come.

In the meeting room next door, the SGP faction, the party that is exactly a century older than Volt Nederland, sang ‘O head full of blood and wounds’ from the Matthew Passion. Gundogan told journalists that she was home sick and coughing a lot. Badgers and Koekkoek met together, an employee took minutes. Dassen tried to call Gundogan twice, but she didn’t answer. She had expressed her disagreement with the change in an email the night before, and it was mentioned in the meeting—although a written vote did not formally count. Anyway, it was two against one.

At 11:50 a.m., Dassen told journalists outside the room: “We have decided to end Ms Gundogan’s party membership.”

Back from the group

She had already been suspended more than four weeks earlier, after reports of transgressive behavior against employees, and she had also been expelled from the group. But the judge subsequently ruled that this was illegal: Volt had not adhered to the group rules that did not provide for suspension and expulsion. Now it went according to the rules, the new ones.

Nilüfer Gündogan will continue as MP, she said after the vote. She declined to comment further because she is ill. The investigation by integrity agency Bing into the thirteen reports about Gündogan will probably never be completed, because Gündogan refuses to cooperate. The reporters, five of whom had NRC talked, talked about sexually transgressive behaviour, pawing, intimidation and abuse of her position.

Read here the NRC investigation into Nilüfer Gündogan

For example, the House of Representatives now consists of twenty political groups – a record. Since March last year, there have already been four splits of MPs: Wybren van Haga separated himself from FVD with two party members. Liane den Haan left 50PLUS. Pieter Omtzigt the CDA. The House of Representatives will only become even more fragmented. And not only because parties are less and less successful at attracting voters – it also appears to be increasingly difficult to keep a fraction afloat.

High-speed splintering

Splits are of all times, says professor of parliamentary history Bert van den Braak. For example, between 2003 and 2006, seven of the 150 MPs split from their group. “But the speed with which it is happening now is striking.”

In the past year, all four cases involved parties with internal problems. The CDA was in a power vacuum. FVD fell apart due to, among other things, the extreme right-wing radicalization of Thierry Baudet. At 50PLUS it had been chaos for years. And the young Volt party pays the price of inexperience: Volt Nederland started as a project of friends. That club of friends experienced rapid growth (the party has more than 13,000 members) without the party organization being geared to it. There was also no party tradition or culture in which candidates emerge who are doing well, for example at the local or regional level. Regulations in the party or faction, personnel policy, a capable board – none of this existed or was insufficient, Volters himself says. For example, nothing happened when last year’s campaign showed that Nilüfer Gündogan and Laurens Dassen did not trust each other and would never be able to work well together. It also led to a report of intimidating behavior about Gündogan, by a then seventeen-year-old woman, reaching the chairman (then still Laurens Dassen), but nothing was done about it.

At Volt, which continues with two seats, the unrest is not over yet, although Gundogan is now gone. The party will appeal against the judgment of the preliminary relief judge earlier this month, which judged that Volt had to accept Gundogan in grace again. This also has constitutional reasons: Volt wants to challenge that a judge can decide on the composition of parliamentary groups. And there will be a party congress, on April 24, at which “the current situation” will be discussed with members. This congress can be used by critics of Dassen to question his leadership. Internally, there is a lot of criticism about the way Volt has handled this crisis.

Laurens Dassen looked relieved when he told journalists on Tuesday afternoon that he “wants to learn lessons” from the matter. Although, just like the previous press moment, after the court ruling, he could not avoid being trapped in the elevator by journalists who continued to ask questions about Volt’s uncertain future.

Read also this report of Gündogan’s summary proceedings against Volt

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