ANP extension
ANNOUNCEMENTS•
More than 300 provincial election candidates were elected today at a meeting of the BoerBurgerBeweging. The party participates for the first time in the province and the ambition is great.
“We don’t just want to become the biggest in Gelderland, but also in the Senate,” said Gelderland party leader Rick Loeters, for example. After provincial elections, elected members of Parliament make up the Senate. If BBB gets big in the Senate, the party can exert substantial influence there, for example on nitrogen policy.
Processing this is important for the constituency, which is largely in rural areas. “A farmer must be able to farm and a fisherman must be able to fish,” said party leader Anja Keuter from Flevoland. “If we continue like this, this will disappear, that’s why we want to be the greatest.”
For BBB, nitrogen is primarily a legal problem, created by the government. “There is a nitrogen problem, yes,” says Loeters. “By the law.” According to the party leader from Gelderland, a province where the problem is severe, innovation to reduce emissions needs to be examined as long as the current nitrogen rules are still in place. “There are many solutions, but politics has a dogma: animals must go away”.
We want to become a stable incumbent, but perhaps we already are.
Animals gone, the party that defends the interests of the countryside has nothing to do with it. “The government has strangled itself in these regulations,” party leader – and the only BBB Member of Parliament – Caroline van der Plas outlined the party’s position. “Stop all this politics and leave it to the provinces.”
So there are 300 prospective MPs there in those provinces who have to do it for the BBB. The party has been running for over a year with the selection of candidates out of 600 applicants and participates in every province.
At the members’ meeting in Nijkerk, Van der Plas referred to the fact that she was in the same place two years ago to announce the list for the parliamentary elections. “Since then, so many people have joined,” said the party leader who welcomed its 10,000th member today. “We want to become a stable incumbent, but maybe we already are.”
What is certain is that BBB is doing well in the polls. According to the ultimate Bearing Pointer, the weighted average of a number of polls, the party has fourteen seats in the House of Representatives. That’s almost 10 percent of the vote.
Whether and how this will translate into March’s results is, of course, the question. Van der Plas plans to become the largest in at least half of the provinces, including Gelderland, Drenthe and Overijssel. “And maybe also in Zeeland.” He then hopes to provide “about eight” of the total 75-member Senate.
