Tweede Kamer verkiezingen 2002

We Won!

Published on May 15, 2002

Just came back from the SP election party. As it looks now, we’ve more or less doubled our seats in Parlement, from five seats in 1998 to at least nine, possibly ten now. In Amsterdam we got just short of eleven percent of the votes, which was incredible.

Apart from us, the other big two winners were the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) who got 26, setting the record for most sears won by a new party in an parlementary election and the CDA, who went from 29 to 43 (!) seats, becoming by far the biggest party, followed by the LPF. The big losers were the three government parties PvdA, from 45 to 23, VVD, from 38 to 23 and D66, from 14 to 8. The other left wing party, Groen Links also lost one seat, going from 11 to 10 seats. Also “losing” big was Leefbaar Nederland, who once were thought to win as much seats as LPF did now, but who now got only two seats, the result of their principled decision to kick Fortuyn out of their party.

So what does this all mean? Is this a move to the right, as television pundits repeated constantly? Or is there more to it?

I think there is. This was not as much a move to the right as it was a punishment of a coalition which managed to lose almost all voter sympathy over the last two years or so. People were sick and tired of Paars, of the way the three coalition partners stifled debate and wanted something new and exciting, something that would break open debate again. At first this was Leefbaar Nederland, but with the entry of Pim Fortuyn, he became the crowbar which forced open Dutch politics. In my opinion, only he was able to do it, because the other alternatives, like CDA were seen as part of the Den haag establishment or like my own party SP and Groen Links, but also the Christenunie too much of a fringe party. There has always been a tradition of new parties doing well in elections when established parties became too arrogant (D66 started out that way) and LPF fitted in nicely. What is new is the margin with which they won, probalby explained by the combination of revulsion of Paars, the charisma of Fortuyn as well as the populistic message he brought of simle answers to complex problems.

It’s tempting to ask what would’ve happened if Fortuyn was still alive. Personally I think his party would’ve become even bigger as I think a lot of people who would’ve voted for him saw what a nitwits the rest of the party were and voted for others. The CDA, the christendemocrats profited from this, picking up Fortuyn voters as did the VVD perhaps, not as much in winning voters from them as in stopping losing voters to them. PvdA otoh and also Groen Links were I think damaged by the witchhunt against the left after Fortuyn’s murder, losing votes to CDA and LPF. For the SP, it mattered less, we stayed mostly out of it. The fact that we nearly doubled is also a sign that it wasn’t just a battle of left versus right wing parties.

I had intended to speculate about possible coalitions now as well but a) it’s late and b) I’m not
entirely sober anymore so I’ll save it till later.

Election Day

Published on May 15, 2002

It’s finally election day and the polls are predicting that 90% of the twelve million people who can vote, will vote today. Which is an unheard of turnout. The previous two parlimentary elections, in 1994 and 1998 had an turnout of about 78 and 74 percent respectively [1]. According to News Planet at 15:45 42 percent of the voters had already voted, compared to just 38 percent in 1998. This included your humble narrator. I of course voted for the party I’m a member of, the SP and will be at the election party later this evening. How much of a party it will be after everything that happened this week is anybody’s guess.

And the same goes for the results of the election. With Fortuyn’s death it’s uncertain of the people who said they were going to vote for his party will still do so. On the one hand, some people may do so as a sign of respect, of grief and sympathy. On the other, many people are wondering whether voting for the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) without Pim Fortuyn is a sensible idea. Since Fortuyn’s death, the other LPF parlementary candidates have emerged from the shadows into the full glare of the media and are now seen for what they are.

I posted yesterday about how Peter “chairman-for-a-day” Langendam ranted about the leftie conspiracy against Fortuyn, but his is just the tip of the iceberg. Two other parlementary candidates made even worse remarks:

First there was porn king Eberhard who said the following in an somewhat incoherent
rant [2] about immigration:

“In 2015 is Amsterdam een negroide moslemstad, dan is de laatste oorspronkelijke bewoner neergestoken op de Zeedijk door iemand met een getinte huidskleur”.
(“In 2015 Amsterdam will be a negroid Muslimcity, with the last original inhabitant stabbed on the
Zeedijk by somebody with a tinted skincolour.”)

Then there was the horsebreeder Wiersma, whose views [2] were just as nuanced:

“Het biologisch fenomeen doet zich nu voor dat de meest succesvolle ondersoort bij de mensen;
het europese ras in aantal met rasse schreden achteruit gaat.”
(“The biological phenomenon now occurs that the most succesful human subspecies; the european race declines rapidly in number.”)

Not good for a party already suspected of being a platform for extreme rightwing, even racists views. No wonder both are already chucked out of [2] the party and will leave after the elections.

[1] Source: http://www.sp.nl/nieuws/kamer98/uitslag.stm
[2] Link leads to a Dutch language site

What now?

Published on May 7, 2002

Even if the killing of Fortuyn wasn’t politically motivated, things will never be the same again, to use the same hoary cliche all the newspapers have been using. Holland has always been an country where the politicians may have been a self selected elite, but you would still find them standing next to you at the herring car, downing a Hollandse Nieuwe. You want to know when the last Dutch politician was assasinated? 1672…

I’m afraid this openess soon will not exist anymore. There have been other attacks on politicians the last two decades -a minister’s house blown up in 1991, the hotel where the extreme rightwing Centrumpartij was meeting being torched, but never anything that justified the amount of security heads of state drag around with them in countries like Germany or France, let alone the USA. I really couldn’t blame politicians if they wanted to be more protected now, but it’s a pity. Something precious will be lost if our politicians become the same as every other country’s.

The other main thing on my mind right now is what will happen in the elections on may the fifteenth. The government has decided, after conferring with the leaders of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn to at least let them go through –constitutionally they had little real choice anyway–but there won’t be any campaigning anymore [1]. The various partyleaders had already decided to stop their campaigns out of respect for Pim’s death, as a sign of their outrage about his killing, including how it damages our democracy.

That latter is what concerns most of us now, both Fortuyn supporters and opponents: this is unique in our history, this is totally and wholly undutch, something which foreigners probably won’t understand. This will be our 11 september, our day the world changed forever. We see ourself as tolerant, rational and enlightened, as somewhat smugly superior to other countries –now we’ll have to review this view of ourselves. Holland, it turns out, is not special, bad things can and will happen here.

[1] The Lijst Pim Fortuyn won’t be appointing a new leader before the elections, probably hoping to pick up some more voters that way as well as a sign of their respect for him.