World News
The anti-Islam lawmaker who won the recent election says he will “continue to moderate” his positions to win power
Portal in Amsterdam
Sat Nov 25, 2023 7:40 p.m. GMT
Veteran Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders vowed on Saturday to become prime minister of the Netherlands after his party won the most seats in the election.
In a lengthy post on it was necessary to gain power.
“Today, tomorrow or the day after, the PVV will be part of the government and I will be prime minister of this beautiful country,” Wilders wrote.
Although Wilders’ PVV, which ran on an anti-immigration platform, finished well ahead of its rivals in the November 22 vote, his party is only expected to win 25% of the seats in the Dutch parliament.
That means he will have to work with at least two more moderate parties to form a government.
On Friday, caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party, which shares many of Wilders’ views on immigration, said it would not attend a cabinet meeting with him.
However, the new leader of the VVD, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, did not rule out offering outside support to a Wilders government.
Pieter Omtzigt, who leads the centrist reform party NSC and is also seen as a likely partner in a Wilders government, said cooperation would be difficult because of the extreme positions he has expressed that appear to violate Dutch constitutional protections on religious freedom.
Coalition negotiations in the Netherlands typically last months, and opinions about the parties’ willingness to work together can change over time.
If Wilders is unable to form a government, more centrist combinations excluding the PVV are theoretically possible, while new elections would be the last resort.