Verdonk: Her misplaced pride

A sailor on dry land

A few weeks ago, I was on the tram from my neighbourhood to the Central Station when I saw a big poster set up at the Amsterdam Passenger’s Terminal showing a lady dressed up as a clean looking tar with hands on ship wheel.

The text on the poster was Trots op Netherland, which means “Proud of the Netherlands”, the lady in the poster was Mrs. Rita Verdonk who until last year was the Minister of Immigration and Integration till her actions brought down the government.

Lady Oddjob’s pride

In my blogs about her, I referred to her as Lady Oddjob and this was derived from the time when she decided to throw her hat in the ring to contest the leadership of her party (VVD) then, she persona and firebrand populism drew impressions of the Oddjob character in a James Bond film decapitating people by throwing his hat like a Frisbee.

She did not win that leadership contest but at the general election she polled more votes than the party leader and tried to unseat the leadership by sleight.

Eventually, she became unmanageable within the party hierarchy and she got kicked out of the party, hence this new incarnation of Lady Oddjob as leader of Trots op Netherland.

No leader at all

I have always been of the view that Mrs. Verdonk might be a good minister but she has no leadership or even decent team-working abilities in politics, she held everyone to ransom and in the process destroyed her party’s ability to continue in coalition after the elections because they lost seats.

Trots op Netherland is no new dimension in Dutch politics, it has nothing to do with being proud of the Netherlands, and rather, it would serve as a refuge for nostalgic, bitter, disgruntled and ignorant Dutch citizens who have been left behind by the changing times.

It would be the gathering place for the populist use of flawed statistics, poorly reasoned logic about problems with the Netherlands and a catchment for those who inadvertently seek greater instability for the country they want to be more prosperous.

We have seen the rise and fall of the Lijst Pim Fortuyn and the advent of Geert Wilder’s band of patriots called the Party for Freedom.

Bitter people

It needs the articulate verbiage of Senator Obama to give voice the real issue here which as the truth is best not spoken, he might have been expressing a frustration in not being able to break into the working class communities around America when he said, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them, and it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”.

Whether it was politically astute for Senator Obama to say that, say it in that way or try to rephrase it in some more digestible language, time will tell, but the is the truth as glaring as you will get it about populist parties and their causes.

The congregation of bitter people who cling to nostalgia, religion, guns, antipathy, anti-immigrant sentiment or some other so-called patriotic or nationalist cause in the name of taking back their country, which in fact, is taking their country back to the Dark Ages of economic stagnation, insularity and protectionism all of which would never yield good dividend in this global village we now inhabit.

Now, we live in a free country with the freedom to assemble for any cause we might be persuaded of, if the “bitter” people need a sort of representation in our political system, they are welcome to proselytise and they would find sympathisers, people who would lurk in the shadows providing substantial but clandestine support – democratic subversion, you might call it.

The proud are represented

I would contend that those who are really proud of the Netherlands have already spoken, they voted for the parties now in power who for all their foibles have more broad-based ideas for taking the Netherlands forward than saying anything that would panic people into running into the last refuge of the scoundrel – blind Patriotism. (Paraphrased from Samuel Johnson)

No nice words for Mrs Verdonk

An Engaging Reality Show – the Dutch Parliament in session

The Dutch have a penchant for straight talking but always seem to act towards a form of consensus or compromise.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament when an emergency debate was called to address the Ayaan Hirsi Ali issue with the minister – Mrs Rita Verdonk.

Expatriates like myself hardly watch Dutch television, but somehow expatriates had a compelling desire to witness the events in the Dutch Parliament which ran on till about 3:00AM.

This is, I think, the fourth time in less than 2 years that Mrs Verdonk has been called to the parliament to address issues the legislature think border on abuse of power, abuse of privilege, the lack of due process and abrogation of procedure.

The Hirsi Ali case had a considerably high profile, being that the decision Mrs Verdonk made automatically meant Mr Ali cannot continue to be a Member of the Dutch Parliament.

Backslash, Slash, Backspace, Backslash - Questions

The MPs had a field day posing questions and questioning rationale, it looked like we were going for the full showdown, but for all the times that Mrs Verdonk has like a chastised school pupil appeared before the house, things have almost gone to the brink, but there was always a pull back.

There is no doubt that Ms Ali used false information to register as an asylum seeking, there might have been reason for any asylum seekers to use a false name for expedient reasons of leaving behind their history and making them untraceable till such a time as they are ready to be exposed.

Mrs Verdonk as also right within the remit of her ministerial duties to institute an investigation to ascertain the circumstances in which Dutch citizenship was granted and the validity of that exercise.

Communications schizophrenic

However, whilst the letter send to Ms Ali indicates that her Dutch citizenship is invalid, it gives her leave to appeal within 6 weeks, but in play of words that definitely exasperated a not few MPs Mrs Verdonk opined that she observed rather than affirmatively indicated that situation.

The debate that ran through issues like the minister’s truthfulness, understanding of the law, appreciation of the power of parliament and deference to its demands, hardly any MPs could find words of praise at her actions.

Rather, one ex-leader of her party did express surprise at the speed of resolution of the inquiry alluding to the fact that the backlog of claims in the immigration department would have been cleared up if things were that efficient. They are not – that department is an utter bureaucratic mess.

Called to order

In the end, Mrs Verdonk – The Iron Lady and my Lady Oddjob has been ordered, yes, ordered, to review the case of Ms Ali on the status of her citizenship and where it is found that her claim is valid, it should be accelerated.

Yesterday, I discerned that we would not hit the streets in protest, but expect the Dutch to do something about it – this compromise is as good as it gets – the minister does not entirely lose face, the government does not collapse and parliament gets to impose its will.

There is a Dutch ambivalence to this issue, in that the many I have chatted to, on the face of it commend Mrs Verdonk for following the law, but when I raise issues of the exercise of the law requiring a human face and the possible negative effect on expatriates or the fact that a Dutch a language that thrives on exceptions cannot seem to seen exceptions in the imposition of the law, Mrs Verdonk’s esteem falls.

This is probably part of my integration, trying to understand the Dutch psyche – where I would have thought a big slap on the wrist would have sufficed with an admonition and liberal sanction, the obstinate adherence to laws has undone all the parties involved.

The chastised Verdonk

Mrs Verdonk can as well put paid to the idea of leading her party at the end of May – it is a case of an opportunist being overtaken and outplayed by the opportunity. Like Samson, his exercise of power in trying to destroy his enemies also brought the building down on himself.

I would not rejoice too early, but I cannot wait to see Mrs Verdonk come second best in the leadership race for the Liberal Party.

However, it is only in Dutch politics that the most high profile minister of the realm is a minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Justice.

Apart from the Prime Minister who has had a makeover from his erstwhile Harry Potter looks, one wonders who those who run portfolio ministries are – Finance, Interior Matters, Foreign Affairs, Justice and Defence – they all probably have not been mentioned once for anything significant, this year.

Bizarre, but that is living in the Netherlands – amazing place!

References

The Verdonk Archive

Expatica's Dutch news in English: MPs order Verdonk to reconsider Hirsi Ali's status:

Expatica's Dutch news in English: Hirsi Ali: fast decision amazes ministers:

A new spitting cell

Primary school nightmares

One can only reminisce with amusement those kinds of myths and rumours that pervade the mid-mornings of primary school breaks on events that purportedly happened after closing the day before.

Before the rumour another primary school memory surfaces with the event of having all my hair shorn after a visit to the barber's though one is not sure if that was a professional mistake on the part of the barber or a Machiavellian ploy by my father for his amusement.

I never lived that episode down, with all the name-calling at school the next day. Suffice it to say kids can be so unknowingly unkind.

However, getting to school one morning the air was filled with the rumour of a spitting cobra having been caught and killed in the alleyway that leads to the playing area.

Every sort of embellishment followed with the legend of spitting teeth, blindness, terrifying and nightmarish aggressive attacks that made on walking daintily for days in the playing area thinking a brood of cobras had arrived to paralyse our quest for fun.

Faced with a spitting cobra

You may wonder why this diversion into triviality, even I wonder at the consuming triviality that accompanies the purposeful and deliberate lack of vision and social determination of our politicians.

News reaches one that a social miscreant who alleged tried to spit in the face of the Dutch Immigration and Integration Minister still languishes in a police cell pending unknown action beyond the complaint lodged by the minister.

That the minister should draw such animosity is no surprise; though she did so deftly evade the attack; her seemingly obnoxious policies one of which involves having to gain fluency in Dutch and its customs before applying to reside in the Netherlands is covered in another of my blogs.

Once again, one does not condone the unwarranted personal attacks on persons, especially those of importance in governance and society.

To pretend that certain actions and policies can be promulgated without some reaction or reactionary seeking to express dissent in some unusual albeit despicable manner is to forget the nature of society, especially when one is the Integration minister.

The unfortunate event occurred on a family outing and so probably would have affected the members of the minister's family, but then it exposes them to the fact that the wife and mother can be held both in esteem and utter contempt - such is life.

Comfortable crime figures

Not wanting to contrast the inaction of the police to ones plight when three young men put their feet into me in many bodily places which eventually required hospital treatment.

One can only subsume that lodging a complaint with the suspect to hand is easier resolve to the police than reporting actual crimes against the person where the suspects have bolted.

However, one should think that person should have now been charged with an affray except if some innovative terrorist related  crime is about to be evoked, hence, the euphemism 'The motive of the "attack" remains unclear', that said entirely without prejudice. One has to explore if a spitting cell is operating the Netherlands; that represents enough terror to our leaders.

Nonsense and sensibilities

One has documented repeatedly the apparent pre-occupation of politicians with burnishing their image and seeking redress from the most playful name-calling or irreverence that government and leadership suffers.

Might it be that the lack of inspirational ideas to get involved in mean that there is just enough time to sue for being called a toddler, or risk a diplomatic fallout for the out-spoken commentary of a truthful foreign minister.

All this, in face of the fact that the Dutch are considered blunt, if not altogether brusque.

To want to sanitise oneself from the rough and tumble of politics in the cocoon of a bye-gone age of serf and unimpeachable master is fallacy to the extreme, but that fallacy is suddenly too present in the Dutch policy, none of which leaves us with much to be surprised about.

One wonders in the end if the freedom of expression through spitting is not being curtailed by this new crop of political untouchables that crowd the Netherlands political landscape.

If one lesson can be learnt of history; Julius Caesar, a model of political office did have the opportunity to say, "Et tu, Brute"

Reference

Spitting cobra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Man held for spitting at Verdonk

Tolerance as a mindset of choice, prejudice and hypocrisy - Part 2

Poster Dogs Potter