Exit Harry Potter, pursued by a bear

Harry Potter, or at least his Duthc standin

Finally Jan Peter Balkenende does the right thing and resigns, as the exit polls show his party, the Christian Democrats, have lost the elections. This after eight years of one doomed, short lived government after another, years in which the country only got worse. But now that he has lost he’s taking his toys and gone home. He won’t be the next prime minister so he won’t be party leader or even member of parliament either.

The funny thing is, he’s resigning just because the exit polls are bad — few real counts have been returned yet. But as it looks now his party will only have 21 seats, down from 41. Meanwhile the competition has done much better: the social democratic PvdA (partner with the CDA in the last government) has lost slightly, down two seats from 33 to 31 and the liberal VVD winning big from 22 to 31. Also doing well, sadly, is Geert Wilders, who goes from nine to 22 seats. The third coalition partner in the previous government on the other hand, the even more Christian democratic CU has lost one seat, from six to five.

More upsetting but not unexpected was the lost of the Socialist Party, going down from an all-time height of 25 seats to 16, which is in fact much better than they were expected to do at the start of the campaign. On the left this loss was made up for in part by the GreenLeft party winning four extra seats, from seven to eleven. Also winning was the left-liberal D66, from three to ten seats, largely due to the consistent opposition this party fought against Wilders.

If the exit polls are right, this means there is no clear left or rightwing coalition possible that can count on a majority in parliament. The unwritten rules say it’s the winners, PVV and VVD, that should take the lead in forming a new government. They might want to work together but will need two more parties at least, perhaps CDA and CU, but it will be difficult to not just form a government this way, but keep it together.

On the left the possiibilities are even worse. It’s just not possible to form a properly leftwing coalition, even if it included all left of centre parties together.

Which leaves a new socalled purple coalition as a possibility. Back in the nineties a coalition of the (red) PvdA, (yellow) VVD and (green) D66 created the first postwar government without the christian democrats. This same coalition wouldn’t reach a majority right now, but it would be possible by swapping the D66 for the PVV — if not for the fact that PvdA isn’t keen to work with them and vice versa.

In other words: it’s going to be difficult to get a new government — which may not be so bad, considering all parties want to implement drastic cuts.

Balkenende says: stop whining

Balkenende as Harry Potter in a fake movie poster

The British might think that their prime minister is dour, but Gordon Brown has nothing on Jan Peter Balkenende, our national Harry Potter lookalike. He has been a national embarassement from the first moment he awkwardly moved into the spotlight, especially when meeting with foreign leaders, having the knack to even make Bush look good in comparison. You can be a Christian politician and still have a certain style and grace, as his fellow Christian-Democrat Andre Rouvoet shows. But then Rouvoet comes from a proper traditional protestant background, whereas Balkenende is sort of a retro-protestant, not so much a conservative as someone who wants to reinvent the past. A common accusation against Balkenende is that he wants Holland to move back to the fifties, but the fifties he wants us to move back to never existed; Balkenende himself was only born in 1956, so he never experienced the fifties personally. Instead he seems to have build up this idealised vision of a time when Holland was still Holland, with the family as the cornerstone of society, where everybody knew their place and there was a place for everybody, the churches were full on Sunday, brussel sprouts were the national vegetable and everybody worked hard and trusted their betters.

Therefore, unlike previous leaders of the CDA, e.g. Ruud Lubbers, who were largely pragmatic doers, Balkenende sees it as his job as prime minister to scold the rest of us into behaving. Which is why a few weeks back he started complaining that we complain too much in this country, that we should be pleased we are such a rich and prosperous country, grateful that most of us are quite well off. It’s ture that, to put it bluntly, we’re a nation of whingers, as anybody who reads the papers in the runup to and during a major football tournament — like the one which coincidently started this Saturday — knows. This is not a bad thing, unless you’re a moralistic sourpuss like Balkenende, who wants to see us as a nation of happy, uncomplaining worker bees. In my experience, the people who whinge the most about how cynical we are, or how distrustful are almost always snake oil sellers and Balkenende fits that pattern beautifully.

If he had his way, he would prescribe that new drug that makes you trust strangers to the entire Dutch nation, the better to sell his own plans. Apart from his fetish about politeness and respect he’s an empty suit, a hypocrite who obsesses over the motes in our eyes while ignoring the beam in his own, to speak in his own lingo. He worries about the lack of respect the police get while under his leadership we took part in the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, while at home the gap between rich and poor grew so much that we now have food banks in almost all major cities while CEOs get record salaries. No wonder he doesn’t want us to complain: he knows he is the number one target of our complaints.

Interestingly, a majority of the Dutch population does seem to agree with Balkenende that we complain too much. If we can believe the results of a poll doen by one of the free newsrags, sixty percent of us thinks others complain too much, though only nine percent thinks the same about themselves, because whent hey complain, they have good reason to. Myself, I think whinging is a human right and being slightly cynical and whingy makes you less vulnerable to snake oil merchants like Balkie.