There’s a surprise.
But it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. At the end of the press conference launching his election programme, two members of his parliamentary faction announced their split from the party. According to them Wilders was authoritarian, egocentric and had lost all touch with “Henk and Ingrid”, the common Dutch folk.
Something that could’ve only been news to the PVV faithful.
Wilders’ party isn’t actually a real party after all, with memberships and internal democracy, but a vereniging, a voluntary association, with Geert Wilders as its only member; to be recognised as a political party it has to have at least two founders and one member. In the PVV’s case the member is Wilders and the founders are Wilders and the “Stichting Groep Wilders”, which he of course also owns. You can therefore volunteer for the PVV or support them financially, but nobody but Wilders has any say in the political course of the party, not even its members of parliament. Of course, in practise these will have some say in party policy, but the limits are entirely set by Wilders.
But what would you expect from an authoritarian, xenophobic politician with a flair for right wing populism? Consensus based policies?
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