In a previous post I mentioned how every political party involved in the elections had stopped their campaign out of piety for the deceased. Every party apart from Lijst Pim Fortuyn it seems. This morning, the Spits — a free newspaper aimed at commuters — carried a huge advertisement for the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF). On the left, stretched out over a third of the page there was a picture of Pim with his characteristic smirk with to the right his trademark motto “at your service. Underneath which there was a text stating how touched and impressed the party was bythe massive show of support and grief for Pim Fortuyn during the last week and how important it was,especially now to vote for him and his party.
Is it just me, or is this attempt at winning votes over the body of their murdered leader a bit hypocritical? Not to mention dumb and greedy. Do they really think they will win votes with this stunt? Anybody likely to be swayed by this will already have decided to vote for LPF and it’ll only annoy others. Judging from the comments on Tonie’s Kladblok at least some of the LPF members realise this.
Others however do their best to reinforce the image LPF has as a collection of flyweight nitwits only kept together by Fortuyn’s personality. Take freshly minted chairman Peter Langendam (on the left in the picture) for example. In an interview with the Amsterdam evening paper Het Parool he stated “the bullets came from the Left” [1] and accused PvdA and Groen Links politicians for having helped killed Pim Fortuyn. He is also convinced that the killer was a “professional hitman” [2].
He seems to have a special hatred for Groen Links and its leader Paul Rosenmöller, linking them with Stalin: History’s worst massmurderer was Stalin. He killed sixty million Russians. Communists, that’s where Groen Links comes from. With a green label stamped on it, it was acceptable again. [3] Not that this has anything to do with Groen Links, but that doesn’t matter. They’re a green party and hence part of the “environmental terrorists that do such things” [4], meaning the killing of Pim Fortuyn. He asks “how long we will have to tolerate a fifth estate of non elected organisations that dictates the law to us” [5], meaning those “environmental terrorists”.
I hope I don’t have to tell you that these are just paranoid rants, that there is no organised network of environmental terrorists. There’s no reason to suppose the probable murderer acted other than alone and no evidence so far of his motives. All we know is that yes, he was an environmental activist, but one whose group worked within the system to oppose factory farming, using legalistic and democratic means to stop factory farming. You can disagree with their goals, but not their methods.
So why all this melodrama from mister Langendam? Perhaps he truly believes in a vast environmental leftwing conspiracy, perhaps he used it as a piece of cheap election rhetoric, I don’t know. But one thing is certain, it has no base in fact whatsoever.
Incidentally, Langendam has already stated he will resign immediately after the elections, as he thinks of politics as something unworthy of him. His party can only agree with him.
[1] “kogel kwam van links”
[2 “professionele huurmoordenaar”
[3] “De grootste massamoordenaar uit de geschiedenis was Stalin. Hij heeft zestig miljoen Russen vermoord. Communisten, daar komt Groen Links vandaan. Er is het label groen opgeplakt en dan kan het weer”
[4] “milieuterroristen die dat soort dingen doen”
[5] “Hoe lang moeten we nog tolereren dat een vijfde macht van niet-democratisch gekozen organen ons de wet dicteert?”