The international media expected the populist wave of Brexit and Trump to break through the dikes of Dutch political landscape and expected to hail Geert Wilders. After Ayan Hirshi Ali best known for anti-immigration rhetoric and bashing Islam in the Low Country. Following the polling trend lines, I kinda predicted PM Rutte’s Conservative Liberal part (VVD) would triumph over Geert Wilders’ one member Freedom party (PVV).
What broke the camel’s back was the war of words with Sultan Erdogan of Turkey just a week before the election. See my diary …
○ Dutch Election Prelude – Political Row with Turkey Escalates
Usually in the Dutch election cycle, there are two major parties leading the polls in a dead heat. In the past it would have switched between the Right and Left. That’s what happened five years ago between the VVD and Labour party PvdA. Citizens would vote strategically on turn away from the minor parties. The Christian Democrats as centrist party would lose both from their right and left flank and the smaller socialist parties would lose to Labour.
Not so this time around. The dead heat was between two right-wing parties of Mark Rutte and Geert Wilders. A few days ago, about 40% of the electorate was undecided. Turkish president Erdogan intervened and gave a chance to PM Rutte to show leadership. The VVD was rewarded with a major boost from 25 seats to 33 seats. Still a loss of 8 seats compared to 2012. The Labour party was punished by long time loyal supporters for the decision in 2012 to join the coalition of Mark Rutte and took severe austerity measures. Labour strongholds were the major cities above the Rhine river. PvdA lost up to 75% of their support.
- Amsterdam PvdA 2012-35.8% 2016-8.4% Winner: Green party – 19.3% / D’66 – 18.2%
- Rotterdam PvdA 2012-32.0% 2016-6.4% Winner: VVD – 16,4% / PVV – 16.1%
- Utrecht PvdA 2012-29.6% 2016-5.9% Winner: D’66 – 22.2% / Green party – 20.2%
- The Hague PvdA 2012-29.2% 2016-6.5% Winner: VVD – 20.6% / PVV – 15.5%
- Groningen PvdA 2012-36.4% 2016-8.0% Winner: D’66 – 22.2% / Green party – 20.2%
In the northern province of Groningen, always a socialist stronghold after the fall of communism, a major issue are the earth tremors or minor earthquakes caused by decades of gas winning. The government in The Hague had not taken the concerns of the population seriously and failed to provide compensation for serious damage to homes and businesses. The Green Party made major gains in this province.
Christian Democrats used to have a strong presentation in the two southern provinces (Catholicism). Their support lies in the rural areas and in the agricultural sector, a major boost for the Dutch economy because of export! Wilders had lived in Indonesia, a majority Muslim nation, and must carry bad memories from his years in the former Dutch colony. Wilders is popular by the old generation of Dutch people who also carry memories of their youth or of parents who lived through the war for independence of Innonesia after the Japanese surrender in August 1945.
European leaders breathe easier as Rutte routs Wilders | Deutsche Welle |
With his first-place finish in the Netherlands’ elections, Mark Rutte has effectively halted the right-wing populist Geert Wilders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is among the European leaders welcoming the result.
Both the vote count tallies and the reactions poured in during the early hours of Thursday morning as politicians and individuals across Europe and the world took in the results of Wednesday’s parliamentary election in the Netherlands.
In what many considered to be a bellwether election for the European Union, the center-right Rutte clearly defeated Wilders in what many saw as a symbolic victory against European populism.
Many European leaders offered congratulatory messages to the acting Dutch prime minister, who will now stay on in office for a third term. But just as many chose to highlight Wilders’ defeat, framing his party’s second place finish with 20 seats – far below the 30-odd seats he had been predicted to win – as a resounding success for the unity and democratic values of a European Union battered by populism from both within and outside the bloc.
Elections 2017: What the Dutch papers say | Dutch News |
A beaming Mark Rutte features on the front page of all the Dutch papers on Thursday morning, with the exception of Trouw, which carries a dejected Lodewijk Asscher.
‘The centre wins’ the NRC headlines its election result analysis. ‘The Netherlands has woken up ‘a normal country’, in the words of VVD leader Mark Rutte,’ the paper writes. There has been no ‘populist revolt’, only a ‘couple of hammer blows’.
Among the many parties and winners the NRC detects a clear trend: the centre dominates. ‘The patriotic spring announced by PVV leader Wilders has turned out to be a mirage. The Netherlands remains what it has essentially been for decades: many-facetted and largely moderate.’
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Right-wing
‘The Netherlands wakes up a right-wing country this morning, with the VVD as the undisputed winner’, Trouw’s headline reads. Not as right-wing as the polls predicted, but ‘the parties that call themselves left wing only have a combined 37 seats, an all-time low in a trend that was started at turn of the century,’ the paper writes.
The main conclusion is that `it doesn’t pay to be in the cabinet and Rutte was not rewarded a ‘prime ministerial bonus’ for his performance in his last cabinet, says Trouw Labour’s ‘knock-out’ is a bitter pill for the party and will force it to `look long and hard at its raison d’être.’
PM Mark Rutte sees off far-right Geert Wilders | Sky News |
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has won the country’s election, holding off a strong challenge from far-right leader Geert Wilders. Mr Rutte’s centre-right VVD party is thought to have taken 33 of the 150 parliamentary seats, 13 more than Mr Wilders’ anti-Islam, anti-immigrant PVV party in second.
He said his victory had stopped the “wrong kind of populism” in its tracks, after last year’s Brexit vote and the election of President Trump. Mr Rutte said: “We want to stick to the course we have – safe and stable and prosperous.”
Mr Wilders, who wants to close mosques, ban the Koran and leave the EU, received much of the media coverage during the campaign. In a tweet, the politician, sometimes called the Dutch Donald Trump, thanked his backers and warned: “Rutte is not rid of me by a long shot”.
My post before any results were known in the morning of March 15th.
More below the fold …
The Dutch and the Populist Tide
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Brexit – Trump – Wilders – will the Dutch stem the tide of populism today? I trust they will … the voting is under way and I have a good feeling Geert Wilders will not gain sufficient foothold to be a key player in the coalition forming starting tomorrow.
Will the modern Hans Brinker, representing Dutch youth, vote for the Green Party and tolerance?
Green Party leader Jesse Klaver is being described as the Dutch answer to Canada’s Justin Trudeau.
The 30-year-old, who has both Moroccan and Indonesian roots, has offered a very different message to the tougher rhetoric of Geert Wilders and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, in the run-up to Wednesday’s big election in the Netherlands.
With the Dutch Labour Party seemingly tanking in the polls [last update], voters are looking for an alternative and they are looking towards Klaver. He could end up as a kingmaker in future coalition talks.
“I think we are still a tolerant country,” Klaver told Euronews, while on the campaign trail in Leiden, a university city around 15 kilometres from the Hague.
“We are a country who believes in freedom and we are an emphatic society I would say. Geert Wilders is losing momentum. You know he was very high in the polls and now he is going down and down and down. And that’s where he should be.
“And a lot of people who are voting for Geert Wilders are not racist, they are very tolerant. Except they are only afraid for what is happening in their lives. They are afraid for their future.”
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God created the world but the Dutch fought the elements to create Holland. The fight continues to accept not only the people from earlier conquests of the colonies in the Caribbean and Far East, but also the migrant workers from Turkey and Morocco who have shaped and build a multicultural society of today. See the earlier acceptance of reality from pope Francis – Europe’s Destiny Is Multicultural.
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When the dikes broke on Sunday morning on Februari 1, 1953
○ GOP Nominee Donald Trump and His EU Bed Partners
○ Brexit ‘a Warning’ for Hillary Clinton, Says Council on Foreign Relations President by Oui @BooMan on June 25, 2016
Thank you. Appreciate what you wrote.
“Normal” was prominent in the 2012 second round of the French election. Sarkozy couldn’t capture that because he had to appeal more directly to the anti-immigrant (Le Pen) voters than it sounds like Rutte did. Then, at least superficially and from abroad, Hollande did to PS what the Dutch Labour did as the junior coalition partner. Difficult to conclude from the results that residents are satisfied with the status quo.
Checking back it’s interesting to see that there has long been three main players CDA, PvdA, and VVD (with D66 a strong fourth in 1994) and LPF second (26 seats – albeit leaderless) in 2002 and VVD not in the lead until 2010. Did the 2002 Dutch elections command as much outside interest as this one? Is the center stronger and the left weaker than in 2002?
A variable that seems to differ between Holland and France is the status of the EU and NATO and US. Older and more developed by De Gaulle with the Catholic vote absorbed into it which seems to have precluded a more identifiably “Christian Democratic” party from developing any power.
As I mentioned earlier, I am relieved that there was some sanity in the final election numbers. It looks like the Amsterdam I know and love – if only from overnight layovers – still will be recognizable to me in a few days. I am glad for you and for your peers. I have no illusions – as a civilization, we are not yet out of the woods. But we have shown a firewall against nationalism is possible. I especially love the leader of the GreenLeft party’s comments about how the nationalism represented by Wilders does not represent your nation’s values. He is right about that. For the first time in a while, I am cautiously optimistic. Onward.
I see an obvious problem in the following:
PvdA stumbled badly but GL only picked up a portion of PvdA’s loss. Unlike in the US that does give GL some power, but it doesn’t change the equation. Or maybe it better cements the power of conservatives. Labour shed support across the board and the left reshuffled but in total is now weaker.
Thx for this diary, lots to digest. Some comments on a few portions that stand out for me:
This is not very encouraging, especially given that the Netherlands is not known as an intolerant society. I do think there was once, for a long time in fact and maybe until only recently, such a thing as a distinct ,Dutch culture, or at least a fairly homogenous and unified society which widely and deeply shared liberal, democratic values, a society which worked because of those shared western values. But the social coherence trendline is clearly going in the wrong direction. Not hard to figger out why.
Rutte was right on this one (but should have said it much earlier). I wouldn’t want a flood of people entering this country who don’t believe in its democratic values. Especially migrants who largely have a deep-seated aversion to most liberal western values and who are unlikely to assimilate sufficiently to accept those values. Quite a dangerous social experiment going on now in Europe with all the migrants, policies recklessly undertaken by unthinking politicians.
Not necessarily a compliment, in my book. Though Trudeau is just getting started, he did name a hardcore Russophobe as his Foreign Minister (someone who recently lied and tried to cover up about a family member’s Nazi past). What a message to send to the Russians.
Klaver and the Greens — sounds like a lot of naive, feel-good, PC liberal tolerance talk about a migrant group now firmly embedded in their country and not known for their own tolerance towards western values.
Yeah, I’m probably sounding like Bill Maher on this particular issue. Not currently a very popular stance to take wrt Muslim migrants among most liberals there or here, but it’s the right stance to take as I believe in preserving the good values of western civilization which are now being threatened.
I do appreciate your comments, also in JDW’s diary on same topic, to have a further discussion/dialogue. There have been historic mistakes, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s based on capitalist motives as I have written before. The politicians never base policy on future trends or possible fault lines in society.
Holland and Europe will become a multicultural society with a large minority of immigrants. I don’t spend my vacation on the Mediterranean coast during the summer. Always wonder why Dutch right-wingers or PVV voters take cheap flights to Turkey, Tunesia, Egypt, etc. Once at home, these people fulmigate against Turks, Moroccans, etc. living in their neighborhood. 🙂
I know integration is a problem, but in coming decades with climate change and global warming, best prepare for more of the same.
I like pope Francis recent stance on Europe as a multicultural society.
The advantage of so many parties participating in election for parliament, the average citizen can pick a suitable party to his/her liking. Indeed there is a Islamic party of Turks for the first time (Denk) which separated from Labour (PvdA). There are many foundations for conservation and the treatment of animals. The extreme activists used violence in the past with threats and arson. That is just about gone as the arguments now take place in Dutch parliament.
The assassin of Pim Fortuyn was an animal rights extremist. The movement of Fortuyn died along with the politician (2002). The murderer has recently been freed … that too is part of Dutch justice and tolerance.
Wilders has been on the stage for 12 years now … just wondering if he will take the next step in his working career and move to the US in the footsteps of Ayan Hirsi Ali. A land of opportunity …
Surely Trump can find some suitable work for a man of his caliber. Then again, the last thing we need here is more right-wing nationalists.
Re Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in addition to enduring much in her life with the forced mutilation and the death threats ongoing, she’s been an important voice on the world stage bringing people’s attention to FGM and the harsh treatment of muslim women throughout the world. Also an effective public debater countering Muslim hardliners and faux moderates.
For these reasons, I’ll cut her plenty of slack on some of her political affiliations and beliefs.
○ Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders Are Islamophobes
The “good value of western civilization,” and it is of recent vintage, is separation of church and state. Practice your religion at home and in your house of worship. Leave it there and don’t drag it into or demand that it be allowed in the public sphere.
It works much better that way in countries that have chosen to live under/with a secular, democratic government. However far from imperfect it may be.
Rutte’s trianglulating…
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, writes a letter to all Dutch people (“aan alle Nederlanders”).1 In the version that appears in papers on January 22, 2017, his face fills the left side of the page and the text fills the right side. “Er is iets aan de hand met ons land,” it begins: There is something wrong with our country–but the phrase is colloquial, like something’s happening, or something’s up. Then he complains that “some people” are behaving so poorly in this otherwise fortunate country, as if they’re “ready to throw away all that we, as a country, have worked so hard to achieve.” The dog-whistled “some people” lets the reader fill in the blank: Muslims, immigrants, children of immigrants. The letter reaches a xenophobic crescendo, but it’s a chatty, get-it-off-your-chest kind of xenophobia: “I can understand when people think: If you so fundamentally reject our country, I’d rather you leave. I feel that way, too. Act normal or go away.” That last line–act normal or go away–is the kicker that gets the attention. “Doe normaal of ga weg.”
(Seems he is the self-deporting proponent.)
Act Normal or Go Away
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Oh, I shall!
I don’t know the situation of Islam in The Netherlands, but I’ve done sabbatical periods in both England and France and have a sense about those places. In England I encountered Muslim parents at my daughter’s school, and the women ranged from wearing simple colorful headscarves to those in full-body covering with veil. I didn’t observe hostilities. My general sense is that UK Muslims have, after admittedly several decades, become well integrated into society. An obvious difference between the Uk and France is that the UK is alright with multicultural identity, but France emphatically is not, and anyone suggesting acceptance of multicultural French identity is shunned as an enemy of fundamental republican values.
France has a strong tradition of secularism, enshrined in its constitution and (controversial) laws of late banning headscarfs and burkas in schools and public places, which I think are still in effect.
The UK’s leaders have been much more accommodating to their Muslim population, as with, e.g., allowing local Muslim councils to operate under Sharia law in the area of primarily marriages/divorce. They’re not legally binding, but nonetheless these special religious courts are used by thousands of UK muslims each year.
London has a large and growing Muslim population, and now has a Muslim mayor, apparently a decent chap, perhaps an actual well-assimilated Muslim of socially liberal bent, former Labour MP and held a post in the Gordo Brown govt. We’ll see how that goes, with the fatwas against him from the Islamic extremists and the right-wing threats. Actual moderates usually don’t last long — killed, forced to leave or to shut up.
London now has almost a majority Muslim population in many of its sectors, and the white Brit population in the capital is down to about 43%. When I lived there 40 yrs ago, non-white faces were not much in evidence.
I’m very skeptical that this experiment in rapid social change will work out well in the UK or in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe, at least from the perspective of the traditional native population.