The Netherlands: A Coalition of the almost freedom

We might just have a government

The almost soporific coalition building process that separates the English-speaking governments like the UK and Australia from their continental European counterparts slowly came to a conclusion at the end of September in the Netherlands.

The elections of June produced a result that was not too far from expectations; the populist rhetoric of the right-wing elements had raked in dividends not enough to assume power but to become kingmaker.

With time the parties that cringed at getting into bed with this rather unpalatable bride found themselves in blushing embrace of each other copulating to create a bastard child that would have the town pointing fingers at it every time it came out to play.

The finger needs to scratch an itch

The Polder model concession-compromise deal-making political process in the Netherlands is under strain. It is like having three threatening holes in the dyke with Hans Brinker and friends plugging the holes with their fingers, however, one friend has got a nasty rash that needs a good scratch – that hole will not be plugged for long.

So the Christian Democrats (CDA)who lots big in the elections, the liberal sounding but right-wing VVD which would provide the Prime Minister and the PVV anti-Islam party have reached a deal with the PVV taking no cabinet responsibilities but able to bark and maybe bite from the periphery.

I would suppose there was a fear of allowing the PVV in government to prevent the sanctions that the Austrians suffered from the EU for going in coalition with an ultra-right-wing party years ago.

One only has to go through the agreement that makes up this coalition operating under the motto of “Freedom and Responsibility” to see that it has Geert Wilders paws, spittle and doggie poo all over it.

The message is the substance of horrid

Our intelligent being insulted with impunity that anything there represents freedom and the idea of responsibility is more along the lines of each Dutchman to his own.

Squaring populism with the realities of government is hard enough a task, if the Dutch would see what nasty hand they have been dealt is another thing.

Childcare and healthcare subsidies would be cut, probably in order to hit the pockets of the supposedly more fertile immigrants, it is however a measure that seems to gel with responsible handling of the economy in these tough times.

Immigrants emigrate with faces covered

Immigrants would now have to pay for their integration courses, they are not wanted and it would not be made easy for them to integrate, the Dutch language is hard enough; but why also give the immigrant a helping hand to belong amongst the Dutch?

In my over 10 years of living in the Netherlands and I live in Amsterdam, I have seen many things of Islamic orientation including streets in certain neighbourhoods designated alcohol free but I have never ever seen a woman in a burqa.

In fact, I am getting beyond myself here, I have never seen a person in a burqa, the sex of that person might have to be determined on closer inspection. Now, I regularly see people in full visor helmets which are for safety and protection – to the Muslim one might stretch the case for the burqa being for the safety of the person and the protection of that person’s honour.

No doubt, there is a conflict of civilisations where in the Middle-East the womenfolk are seemingly without expression but in the West the face is the link for any expression and communication, without the face and the eyes people become unsure of what and who they are dealing with.

The point I am trying to make is out of the 16 million inhabitants of the Netherlands we might not be able to count 1,000 people in a burqa and we are going to waste parliamentary time promulgating laws for a problem that does not exist but panders to a sense of fear that has been agitated to the extreme all around Europe.

Thinking it through

Most right-wing and populist rhetoric cannot stand intelligent scrutiny and it might well inform why education would get hit by this cabinet by the reduction of the duration of student grants from 4 to 3 years and the spending on arts and culture will be cut, lest I forget, integration tests are to be made more difficult.

For that last clause, the subtext is we don’t want immigrants, we will not help immigrants and those who strive to be integrated will have a tough time at it, the cultural schemes to help the process of integration will be starved of funds – basically, if you are not indigenous, start packing your bags – I am going nowhere, I am European.

If you work for the police or in the justice ministry you should leave your headscarf at home, I suppose the milliners can come up with amazing designs that make a mockery of that ban.

I had to lift this from the text, “Benefit cuts for people whose clothing or behaviour stops them finding work.” I suppose if I wore a suit for a cleaner’s job interview or I hate being sworn at I could be at risk.

All hot air to no particular end

You can go faster on the roads, you need to be a member of coffee shops to visit, prostitutes have to be old, Sundays will be kept holy for the 12 days where you can defile the temples in a year, stop and search might become indiscriminate, you could end up in prison longer, Israel will be a better friend and Europe will be getting less and much more eye watering stuff.

All of this to make the Netherlands a better place, the Dutch more comfortable with having their concerns addressed and the dawning of a great nation to rival the ranking of the Dutch in the golden age of the 17^th Century – if you believed that you have been had so badly, you will never cut lose.

This arrangement according to my itch analogy earlier might only last a few months before it disintegrates for a new election where Geert Wilders might well have beguiled enough to become Prime Minister, especially those who do not notice that having voted for him their minimal wage is to be reduced.

That cabinet will only last a few months and hopefully we are on for a reset for the electorate to move back to the centre – the experience would be painful but a veritable lesson would have been learnt very well.

Reference

A summary of the coalition agreement

Firing of Pardon Attorney hardly a victory for Nigerians

Pardon me

First the email and then the Nigerian blog-lines were awash with the story, amidst the euphoria, I took another look at the story and really, I saw we still had serious issues of objectivity to contend with.

Roger C. Adams [Source: Department of Justice - #302: 06-26-98 Adams Appointed United States Pardon Attorney] was a Pardon Attorney appointed just over 10 years ago on the 26^th of June 1998 by the then Attorney General Janet Reno [Source: Janet Reno - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia].

His job was to review all petitions for Executive Clemency [Source: Department of Justice – Rules Governing Petitions for Executive Clemency] and submit recommendations to the President.

At that appointment he had already served 25 years in the Department of Justice and definitely was deemed qualified, experienced and capable of dispatching his duties objectively, fairly and justly – I will accord him all due courtesies.

An immigrant in crime

The case [Source: Furore over Bush lawyer's racism in deportation case of Nigerian minister] of Chibueze Okorie, a Nigerian immigrant in the United States might sound like a fairy tale with its twists and turns.

Mr. Okorie having reached the United States had tried in 1989 to take the short-cut to ill-gotten wealth by being a driver for a heroin ring – he got caught and ended up serving an 18-month sentence. The love of money, the need to be oppressively ostentatious and the pursuit of illegal ways and means bedevils many but we can choose to live right.

A federal law stipulates that immigrants who have committed felonies once having served their sentence should be deported – Mr. Okorie had the dilemma of turning his life around enough to make a strong case for clemency that would also act in his favour against deportation.

His lawyers created the impression that Mr. Okorie if deported would be tortured and imprisoned in Nigeria – the veracity of those claims are suspect, but be that as it may, he filed for clemency in 2000.

Assessing the case for clemency

Mr. Adams reviewed his case and obviously had his doubts about the truthfulness of Mr. Okorie in his application and petition – however, the Standards for Consideration of Clemency Petitions [Source: Department of Justice – Standards for Consideration of Clemency Petitions] do indicate that after a background check by the FBI, the following considerations play in the recommendations of the Pardon Attorney.

Post-conviction conduct, character and reputation – on a personal level Mr. Okorie had turned his life around, he is a minister who counsels prisoners and ex-convicts – we can be satisfied that he is giving something back to his community and society.

Seriousness and relative recentness of the offense – as a driver for a heroin ring, he was inadvertently involved in drug trafficking which is a very serious offence – there are countries where Nigerians have been executed for trafficking the drug.

More so, studies [Source: Edward Jay Epstein - Chapter 22 - The Heroin-Crime Nexus] going as far back as 1971 show how serious crime in the cities is related to heroin addiction, he being part of the vicious circle that becomes a bane of society.

Acceptance of responsibility, remorse, and atonement – not once in all the writing about this case have I read that Mr. Okorie has genuinely taken responsibility or expressed remorse for his actions, his counselling work however, might well be atonement.

Need for relief – Mr. Okorie’s urgent and particular need for relief was to avoid being deported and that basically is the crux of this clemency case, it obviously would make the assessors of his petition wonder if his being returned to Nigeria would lead to him being persecuted.

Official recommendations and reports – having assessed his case, the Pardon Attorney seemed to have recognised his work in the community, Mr. Okorie also had the backing of churches, community leaders and Senator Hillary Clinton in support of his petition.

Just because one has renowned people in their camp does not however mean that the process should be short-circuited.

Stereotypes in recommendations

Mr. Adams duly made his recommendations and expressed his doubts in comments that were eventually deemed racist.

He erred in judgement by saying, “This might sound racist, but [the applicant] is about as honest as you could expect for a Nigerian. Unfortunately, that's not very honest”.

This was an unfortunate comment made about Nigerians on the one hand, but it also showed that Mr. Okorie an ex-convict, albeit a reformed man, had become the standard by which the honesty of Nigerians was assessed – I think I feel more offended by that.

This is more than one man’s opinion

That Mr. Adams was compelled to express these views in writing is instructive, but on closer scrutiny, he was probably expressing a generalisation borne from the depiction of Nigerians in all sorts of criminal activity and the press.

In other words, Mr. Adams simply put in words what others might have by commission or omission allowed to affect their judgement when dealing with Nigerians.

Invariably, Mr. Adams was fired as long ago as January on the grounds of his being racist and that not through any activism of Nigerians but evaluation and monitoring within the Department of Justice.

I would contend that the sacking does not begin to deal with the deep-seated stereotypes certain countries already have of Nigerians, it only means people who harbour such thoughts or prejudices need to be more circumspect or subtle in their expression without leaving traceable evidence on which they might be hung.

Mr. Adams recommended that Mr. Okorie not be granted clemency.

I could see why part of the objective assessments and merits of his case would include considering Mr. Okorie’s nationality; he was fighting deportation, a deportation order that would have had him sent back to Nigeria. I think it is disingenuous of the activists that commented on this case to think that insignificant to drawing up the recommendations.

We suffer because of our own people

The most critical part of this discourse really affects us a lot more that the euphoria of a sacking for tarring Nigerians with a black brush.

Many of us have had to try harder, do better, strain more and excel at excelling ourselves to meet the average observation of our capabilities because people have gone before us and fouled up the system with dishonesty and criminality, that the playing field is already levelled against us, at entry.

In our different walks of life, we make little footsteps as mini-ambassadors of our country only to find that our trails are marked out by mileposts sunk in by those other Nigerians who had forsaken virtue for deception, dishonesty and crime.

Those mileposts then become the beacons that leave one slightly more sympathetic to the new Nigerian Ambassador to the Netherlands in terms of the address she gave when she was presenting her credentials.

We are still the majority and we matter

Those bad Nigerians are however NOT in the majority and the work that we do in our little way would not be over-shadowed by the nefarious activities of the few – our duty still remains to project the best that can seen of Nigeria by example of word, deed and life.

I do not begrudge Mr. Okorie anything as he struggles to keep his relevance within the community that sees him as valuable and avoid deportation; the truth is that Mr. Okorie might have served his time and is forgiven, but his criminal act then has piled up into the accepted body of knowledge about Nigerians - he is part of the creative process of what he is now up against.

If you have in the past brought the name of your country into disrepute, it would catch up with you somewhere in the future; the self-same people of Mr. Okorie’s ilk - many living in opulence without auditable means - when he was a criminal have allowed Mr. Adams to err very seriously in judgement – in those circumstances, it would be unfair to continue to bang Mr. Adams anymore on the head and rejoice at the ruin of such a long and distinguished career.

Lady Oddjob - From Irrevelance to Assimilation

Replacement is not enough

Poor Mrs Verdonk must be wondering what hit her, as the headlines seem to have shifted to more important things than some female running for the leadership of a major coalition partner in the Dutch government.

For all the vituperation and brickbats she has received for the way she has run the Ministry of Integration and Immigration portfolio, one would think any detractor would ask for her to be replaced.

It now transpires that certain people are not so much concerned for the person of the minister but the office of the ministry itself.

In what might be called a laudable example of integrated thinking by an immigrant alderman in Amsterdam; he suggested that better-focused ministries could so easily provide for the services Mrs Verdonk’s ministry provides.

Lost twin of a pair of briefs

Basically, the observation is that Mrs Verdonk has focused so much on immigration to the detriment of integration that she might as well be a second Justice Minister.

This is quite insightful because she has been in cahoots with the Justice ministry on many occasions where immigrant rights have been abused, ignored or overruled or pilloried for populist sake.

It is arguable that the minister needs re-education as to what her brief entails or she has performed to the expectation of making her brief irrelevant to our Dutch polity.

Our Lady Oddjob is definitely now at odds with her brief.

No balance just sway

If the thrust of the ministry has grown lop-sided to favour broadly one side of an intended balance of integrating immigrants, it makes sense that the functions of integration should go to the education or social affairs ministry.

There might be a case for putting immigration in the care of internal affairs whilst the justice ministry provides effective guidance in handling those matters.

Assimilate! Assimilate! Exterminate!

I could not agree more, the lady has polarised the general tasks of her remit as to obviate the need for her ministry, which in some cases has been an influence peddling forum for beating on the unfortunate.

This, one must say is a classic case of total fulfilment – the day immigration and integration brought forth assimilation.

This is just what they want every immigrant to become – assimilated – where better to start than at the ministry itself?