After the elections the fun will start…

I did promise to spend some time looking at coalition possibilities, didn’t I? To recap, the election results were as following:

Looking at the above figures, what are now realistic options for a coalition, keeping in mind it has to have at least 76 seats to have a majority in parlement. Meaning that a new government needs the support of at least three parties, possibly four. Four party coalitions are rare however as well as difficult to keep together. If we look at it realistically, there are now three coalitions possible: 1) CDA-LPF-VVD, 2) CDA-LPF-PvdA or 3) CDA-VVD-PvdA of which the first one is the most probable.

CDA-LPF-VVD

This coalition would be rightwing, with ironically enough the CDA, the christendemocrats as the left most party. VVD and CDA are coalition partners of old, having governed together for most of the 1980ties. LPF is somewhat of a wild card, having lost focus with the death of their leader, but their policies as stated in Fortuyn’s book De puinhopen van Acht Jaar Paars [1] have some similarity with those of the VVD. This would lead to an even more neoliberal economic course, with the CDA cast in the role of the defender of the public interest and the weaker members of society.

Lots of tension between the CDA’s more conservative, christian[2] right of center policies and the VVD’s and LPF’s more neoliberal freemarket rightwing policies as well as a strong, leftwing opposition from D66, PvdA, Groen Links and SP may mean an early end to this coalition…

CDA-LPF-PvdA

A more left of center coalition, though leaning more to the right then the old Paars coalition of VVD, PvdA and D66 did. The counterweight of D66 against the VVD is gone and replaced by a party to the right even of the VVD. Less plausible then the CDA-LPF-VVD coalition if only for the animosity betweent he PvdA and LPF. The PvdA was the party attacked the most by Pim Fortuyn and responded by mounting an unheard of for the Netherlands hard and at times personal campaign against him. After the murder, both the LPF and a substantial part of the electorate held the PvdA and especially its leader, Ad Melkert personally responsible for Fortuyn’s death. Not a good sign for a fruitful alliance between the two parties.

Furthermore, the PvdA is also the party which lost the most during the elections. They went from 45 seats to just 23, a greater loss then that of the VVD. To reward them for it with participation in government is more than dodgy. It certainly wouldn’t restore the confidence of the public in the political establishement.

CDA-VVD-PvdA

This is the worst of the three possible coalitions and really only possible if the LPF collapsed or splintered even before a new government is formed. It wouldn’t take into account the voters’ wishes at all and may permanently damage their (our) trust in politics. Riots in the streets if this one happens without the LPF disintegrating. It also rewards the losers of the election instead of the winners.

Other possibilities?

Not many. There may be a possibility that one of the smaller, leftwing parties joins a CDA-LPF-VVD coalition to balance it more to the centre, but experience teaches that this is hellish on the party in question.
Every time D66 was in power, they have been punished for it at the next elections, simply because as a smaller party they carried not enough weight to push through their own visions. The rare occusion when they
did manage to achieve something, the bigger parties took the credit…

More thoughts on this will follow.

[1] The Debris of Eight Years of Purple, the old coalition being called Paars, “purple” because of its mixture of the red PvdA, the blue VVd and green D66.

[2] with which I don’t mean the sort of fundamentalist Christianity y’all may be familiar with in the States, but the older traditional Christianity as defender of the weak and
safekeeper of traditional ways of life, without this being codewords for bigotry or intolerance.