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

The Netherlands: Elections grant the freedom to assail

Moderates depart for the extreme

For long I have lamented the docile and cuddly nature of the moderate leaning politicians in the Netherlands who have for the past 8 years given ground to the voluble, garrulous extreme representatives of populist agendas.

One area that seems to excite the electorate without the necessary proof is that of immigration, that in the sense of immigrants who do not have much as opposed to wealthy and prosperous immigrants.

In the Netherlands, the fault lines have been drawn on the anti-Islam rhetoric fronted by The Freedom Party – as an aside, I have never seen a party with “Freedom” in its name ever espouse the real ideals of freedom.

They usually exercise the freedom to be nasty, rotten, atrocious and reprehensible and claim every attack on their positions as an attack on their freedom of expression.

The populists have the field

The middle ground of the moderate, the reasonable and the consensual could easily have consigned these extreme elements to the scrapheap but the traditional parties and the age-old civility of discourse have been mute, blind, ineffective and scared to tackle hot-button issues that populists thrive on for mass hysteria.

This populist activity warps our democracy and the dividends end up with parties whose singular and narrow agendas is the equivalent of giving control of a cruise liner to someone can hardly float a canoe.

Yesterday, we were at the polls for the local government and council elections and we chose representatives for our local councils and cities in two separate sets of lists that were the perfect confusion for the ballot box.

In the end, I had to go for broad party policy rather than particular party representative balancing the issues of the party I thought was better for my local government which surprisingly was quite different for the one I considered better for the city council.

They are gathering pace

The Freedom Party fielded candidates in two cities, Almere which was reclaimed land – a polder, and Den Haag (The Hague) which is the administrative capital of the Netherlands – they would probably be the biggest party in Almere and the second largest in The Hague.

With the general elections coming in June as I had surmised at the fall of the last cabinet in February there is every possibility that the Freedom Party might well sweep the board and we would be lead by an extreme wing of reactionaries pretending to have the interest of the Netherlands and the Dutch at heart.

Host-Guest dichotomy

It is not like the Dutch can with their Calvinist and Catholic heritage say that in the 21st Century they are anything like a Christian nation and the increase in foreign nationals from Islamic nations has resulted in isolated communities rather than fully integrated adherents to the Dutch ideal.

This was not helped when certain Muslim leaders of thought began attacking the liberalism and tolerance of the Dutch that developed a gathering irritation of guest dictating to host.

The need to crowd the centre

But we need great objectivity in these times not to lose our heads in the hazy cloud of our differences that could bring upon us a government headed for ruin and the destruction of our country but seek the common ground of consensus and commonality that brings out the best of all of us.

The results from Almere are unfortunately a dyke-break, if a polder can vote in the extreme, one can begin to fear the worst but hope that the victory of today just creates the indiscipline and arrogance that would make the people move back to moderation and core Dutch values by June – a long shot but a very hopeful one.

Sources

BBC News - Dutch anti-Islamists makes key gains in local elections

Party for Freedom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fitna - The irresponsible movie [akin.blog-city.com]

The amazing prospect of Balkenende V [akin.blog-city.com]

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Dutch cabinet falls over Afghan row

Polder Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geert Wilders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The amazing prospect of Balkenende V

Balkenende IV collapses

I woke up yesterday morning to the news story on Al-Jazeera television that the Dutch cabinet had collapsed

Though we have had the same Prime Minister [2] since 2002 that was the collapse of the fourth coalition cabinet though this one lasted the longest.

The very obvious and challenging thing to realise is the politics of the Netherlands has changed irretrievably over the last decade from the traditions we have all learnt built the Netherlands into a country of global influence and economic clout.

The dyke collapses

Somehow, I am afraid that the thinking that allowed the Dutch to grab land from the sea for form the land mass we now have in the time worn fashion of the Polder Model [3] of consensus and compromise towards agreement has departed.

In political terms, we have had the equivalent of a dyke-break, I cannot find any outward thinking or celebrated act of statesmanship in the political landscape that has caused the collapse of all the four cabinets.

Rather, political infighting to self-destruction on such matters of local import looking for some political advantage in possible elections have bedevilled the system.

An ambiguous electorate

It goes without saying that we have the governments we choose and we have generally elected conservatives balanced by liberals and augmented by populist extremists, the last cabinet however was an uneasy grand-coalition of conservatives, the centre-left and an orthodox religious party – I thought it was a powder-keg, it only had a very long fuse.

In 2002, the cabinet of Wim Kok [4] dissolved in taking the possible responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre, this cabinet fell on the possibility of extending the tenure of Dutch troops in the NATO alliance in Afghanistan – they basically could not agree on the matter.

Our NATO commitment

Just less than 2,000 troops is not necessarily a significant number in Afghanistan and we do have a somewhat quiet existence there as opposed to the South of Afghanistan but we had been promised the troops will return this summer.

Not to mention the erstwhile Secretary General of NATO was Dutch, so we have a significant and influential member of that coalition pulling out with some consequences and hopefully not too damaging.

Generally, many would prefer that the war in Afghanistan come to an end with all our troops back home, which for me also includes the British troops but we cannot afford to leave a quagmire in that region, I am saddened that if that venture does yield results the footnote the Dutch might attain could be closer to ignominious by reason of little-country politics.

However, with the change of tactics in pursuing the war in Afghanistan there was a need to reconsider the pullback as part of the Dutch contribution, between the parliament and the within the coalition partners there was no agreement leading the Labour Party to withdraw from the coalition because they were against the extension.

Some fearful possibilities

Now, Prime Minister Balkenende might have the opportunity of forming another cabinet, the fifth – it really beggars belief, in July 2006, I wrote No to Balkenende III [4], I cannot believe I am looking at a possible Balkenende V.

I would suppose Jan Peter Balkenende does have some political savvy for holding on for so long even though his Calvinist inclinations might well reflect why he is somewhat invisible and some policies are parsimonious – but with another election the only worse thing that could happen is to have people be persuaded by the vitriolic rhetoric of Geert Wilders [6], the fact is he could be the next Prime Minister.

Sources

[1] Al Jazeera English - Europe - Dutch cabinet falls over Afghan row

[2] Jan Peter Balkenende - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Polder Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Wim Kok - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] No to Balkenende III [akin.blog-city.com]

[6] Geert Wilders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [1] and I was not that surprised.

Verdonk disintegrates bill

Slow and sedentary politics

Dutch politics is based on a consensus, compromise and collaboration model simply called the Polder Model. This is understandable because it does take time, effort, negotiation, horse-trading and resources for rival forces to band together to create infrastructure to reclaim land from the sea, seeing that a third of what is the Netherlands land mass was once the sea.

The national elections took place on the 22^nd of November 2006 and we are just about to get a new cabinet; a coalition of the CDA (Christian Democrats), the PvDA (Labour Party) and Christian Unie (Christian Union), leaving us with a right-leaning government with a social bias.

Expect, abortion, prostitution, drugs, euthanasia and immigration to get a new looking at especially where certain right-wing politicians have carved a representation in the Dutch parliament, ready to cause upheaval and controversy on any issue to gain media prominence.

Disintegrating our peace again

Talking of immigration, Mrs. Rita Verdonk, got elected for the very first time and retained her ministerial portfolio as part of the out-going cabinet, however, within days of the new parliament being sworn in, Lady Oddjob who has done much to upset the applecart of Dutch politics was relieved of the immigration part of her Integration and Immigration ministry as a sop to the parliament.

In my mind she has been more about disintegration and emigration, but despite all attempts to censure her for activities inimical to societal cohesion, these have failed and rather brought Jan-Pieter Balkenende's cabinet down to its knees leading to a fall of the government and an election, all in the name of keeping the polder together, the Dutch way - other democracies would have summarily sacked her to save the government their blushes.

Anyway, a bill Mrs. Verdonk had submitted to parliament for consideration in her ministerial capacity as one of the last acts of this cabinet had suffered extensive amendments that it did not look like what the strict matron ordered. The story.

After intemperate language and high jinx, rather than have the bill voted on, she created enough discomfort in parliament as she tried to withdraw the bill and then all settled for not voting on it all.

Not really as the Dutch intended

Living in the Netherlands, there are quite a number things I have to adjust to, one of which is, people can express an opinion but must not obstinately stand their ground regardless of the rightness of their views, it is considered disruptive.

What is then termed tolerance becomes a situation where your view is noted and if not acted upon, you allow things to happen.

Some politicians are deviating from this Dutch norm; the premise of the Polder Model is attacked with extreme pronouncements and controversial positions which portend to celebrate the adherence to rules. Mrs. Verdonk comes to the fore on this, just as much as Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali who is now resident in the United States.

So, the parliamentarians resolved this debate by first trying to stop the bickering and then passing the bill on to the next cabinet to consider.

As one Member of Parliament said, of Verdonk, "Everything she does is one big power play. When she used the term "unacceptable," we had no desire to continue with the game any longer."

The power plays would not end here when she reverts to an ordinary member of the parliament, she would still be gunning for the leadership of the Illiberal Party (VVD) and making waves to topple Balkenende's fourth cabinet in as many years.

If I had tears to shed, they would be for those whose lives have been dehumanized by the mechanistic adherence to immigration rules to the detriment of humane consideration of their circumstances.

It is not Good Riddance, but Good Bye and thanks for your service to the country; hopefully, there would be no other opportunity to require your services again.

References

The Verdonk Blog trail

The Lady Oddjob Blog trail