Last time I wrote about the aftermath of the parliamentary elections was on May 21st high time to take another look at what’s been going on. There is also some older news I hadn’t found the opportunity yet to comment on, so let’s kill two birds with one stone.
Oops
In the previous post about the elections I wrote about several MPs from the losing parties drawing their conclusions and leaving the Tweede Kamer, but they were not the only ones. Leon Geurts of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) was number 27 on the LPF election list, the last one elected but withdrew his application two days afterwards because he had lied about his qualifications. According to an article in Limburgs Dagblad [1]he lied about having an university level degree when in fact he still had to finish his study. He got into trouble because he couldn’t remember under which professor he did his thesis and because he insisted he got his degree in 1971 — when he was fifteen years old…
Coalition building
Everybody here knows that the only sensible coalition that could be formed after these election is the combination of LPF, VVD and CDA, as I described on 16th May. Every other possibility is either incredibly unrealistic or leads to a minority government. Yet until recently the VVD swore it would not and could not take part in the new government. Piously their current leader, ex-minister of finance Gerrit Zalm explained that the voters did not want the VVD in the government because the VVD had lost so heavily in the elections. He said that the VVD should be in the opposition this time and that others should form the government -naming a coalition of CDA,LPF and the SP (!) as a serious option.
This was of course so much bullshit. Zalm is an experienced politician and he knows he holds the aces in these coalition negotiations. His party has little to lose. As one of the losers in the elections there’s far less pressure on the VVD to be in government then there is on the CDA and LPF. In fact, four years of opposition could well be very beneficial to the VVD in rebuilding their support at the CDA and LPF’s cost. Especially since any coalition not including them would be a weak or even a minority one.
Let’s not forget the internal dynamics of CDA and LPF either. CDA is a party accustomed to governing, having been part of every coalition from World War II up till 1994, when the first VVD-PvdA-D66 cabinet was formed. After eight years of wandering aimlessly through the desert of opposition, blundering from one crisis to another they hunger for their reward. Not being in government this time would be unthinkable. This of course means the CDA has the disadvantage in any negotiations. Their own strength lies in their being the biggest party, without whom no real government is possible either.
For the LPF, their massive victory, coming from nothing to 26 seats in parliament is both a blessing and a handicap. Fast growing new parties do not tend to last long in Dutch politics. If they went in opposition they would both lose voter support (since they then cannot deliver what they promised) as well as run a very real risk of disintegrating, going under in internal squabbles. The example of the senior citizens parties, (who made a good showing in the 1994 elections, but then all but disappeared in the 1998 elections and who this time are gone for good), should be burned in their members’ brains. Even in government it will be difficult enough to survive and keep the support of the voters.
In my view, it will be difficult anyway for the LPF to make their voice heard in this coalition. Both CDA and VVD are experienced in working in coalitions; they’re also coalition partners of old. Any third party runs the risk of being mangled between them. D66 knows of this, as it happened to them in coalition with PvdA and VVD. The LPF itself can be summed up in one word: inexperienced. Their MPs are all outsiders, not trained in politics and hence could be easy prey for the CDA VVD stalwarts.
They blundered already this weekend, when several prominent LPF members called for a general amnesty for all illegal migrants in the Netherlands, whose number is estimated to be around 100,000. [1] The very next day the LPF came back on that statement. [1] Apparently they now wanted a general pardon only for those illegal immigrants who had lived in the Netherlands for longer then five years, had a job, knew the language and had a clean record. This, according to party spokeswoman Zeroual, responsible for the LPF’s migrant policies, was what the LPF had always had as their policy. It’s one example of the inexperience of the new party
It makes sense for Zalm to want to profit as much as possible from both parties weaknesses. By playing hard to get, he got a that much better negotiation position then he would have if he was too eager even if everybody knows it’s a farce. His policy is an understandable one, but somewhat reprehensible, symbolic of old style politics that should vanish in the Brave New Era of political openness the LPF was supposed to
usher in. It’s not quite there yet…
[1] Article in Dutch
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