Why are the Dutch so discontent with their political system?

By: Frank van Vliet

The outcome of the November 22 general elections in the Netherlands came as a big shock to the outside world. While all the mainstream moderate parties lost seats, the big winners of the election were Geert Wilders’ PVV (Partij voor Vrijheid) on the far right and Jan Marijnissen’s SP (Socialistische Partij) on the far left. They succeeded because they managed to set the agenda of  the political debate: fear of radical Islam and of globalisation.

Wilders is a man who claims to have been close to the assassinated Pim Fortuyn. He is less educated and less liberal than “Professor Pim”, who has often been unfairly associated with the radical right by the foreign press. Wilders and Fortuyn share a strong dislike of Islam. Like Ayaan Hirshi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch liberal politician who left the Netherlands after admitting to lying about her asylum application, Wilders, too, needs constant police protection in the Netherlands. Wilders was a long-standing member of the liberal VVD, the party of finance minister Gerrit Zalm, but left the party in 2004 to set up the Groep Wilders, which then became the PVV. Wilders’ success – he won 9 seats in 150 seat Dutch parliament - might well push the VVD more to the right. The VVD gained only 22 seats, down 6, and has been pushed into fourth place.

Wilders equivalent on the left is the charismatic SP leader Jan Marijnissen, and a fierce critic of Dutch membership of Nato and the EU. He calls himself a socialist, but he is in fact a nationalist with his fierce opposition to immigration and cheap labour from east European countries. His positions on these issues led to a tectonic shift in votes from the centre-left PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid), down from 42 to 33 seats, to the SP, up from 9 to 25 seats.

It is not easy to explain the outcome of these elections on purely rational terms. After some difficult years the Dutch economy has been picking up again. The Dutch polder model, a system that relies on a consensual process of decision-making, involving government and other groups of society, including the social partners, has been gaining ground again of late.

These elections were about fear. Since the rise and death of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch electorate has become more volatile and less than predictable. Loyalty to the three big parties since the Second World War, the CDA (Christen Democratic Appeal), the PvdA and the VVD, is greatly reduced. All were losers this time, including the Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose CDA also lost votes, down from 44 to 41. He did a good job in terms of damage control, as the CDA remained the largest party.  In the end, the mainstream parties lost because they were not clear on immigration and Islam, the issues that mattered for the floating voters.

These elections, and those in 2002 en 2003, demonstrated that there is a lingering discontent among a large part of the population that feels alienated by the traditional parties. They will follow anybody who gives them the hope to lift them out of their misery. First, they ran after Fortuyn. Now they are running after Wilders and Marijnissen. They won because they have no part in the technocratic politic class. It is indicative that “Den Haag” (the Hague, the Dutch political capital) has become a popular term of abuse in the Netherlands.

The upside, from the point of view of the establishment parties, is that these voters may switch back easily. The party representing the legacy of Pim Fortuyn did not even won one seat. Even the animal right party did better. It won two.

The problem for those voters who want radical change is that they live in a country whose political system is based on consensus, where everything has to be done with consideration and consultation. The formation of a new cabinet is therefore expected to take a while. The most likely option at the moment is a coalition between CDA, PvdA, SP and a smaller Christian Party. If it came to that – which is by no means certain - Balkenende will continue on as premier. However he will be the leader of a coalition that would lean much more to the left than the centre-right coalition, he has been leading previously.

Europe was not an issue in these elections, and yet the outcome is bad news for Europe. The volatility of the Dutch electorate makes it unlikely that it would pass a new version of the European constitution, which it has rejected in a referendum in 2005. Even more worryingly, it shows that a country once known for its international outlook and tolerance has become more and more inward looking.

 

The author is UK and Ireland correspondent of De Telegraaf

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