The Netherlands face a choice of direction on Wednesday. She could decide the issue of migration.
Hague. The Dutch could wake up on Thursday to a significantly changed political landscape. At least the early election of a new parliament on Wednesday is a directional decision. The country with its 13 million voters is divided into two blocs. One right and one left.
They are talking about the most exciting elections in recent decades, also because Mark Rutte, Prime Minister since 2010, is no longer running, and because just before the polls a third of voters still didn’t know who they should vote for. All polls indicate that center-right parties are likely to gain ground. But the new green-left fusion party, made up of the Social Democrats and the Greens, has recently caught up badly. The day before the elections, the Green Left’s connection with its main candidate, former EU Deputy Commissioner Frans Timmermans (62), reached the previously right-liberal leader VVD, led by Turkish Kurd Dilan Yeşilgöz (46). Both would therefore have 27 seats each in the 150-member Hague Parliament. Behind him is right-wing populist Geert Wilders’ PVV Freedom Party with 26 seats.
Wilders became “Milders”
Wilders definitely wants to participate in government after the elections. He has already received the derisive nickname “Milders” because he is moving further and further away from his fundamental anti-Islamic and anti-European positions: “Criticism of Islam is in our DNA, but it does not necessarily have to be a priority.” Wilders containment migration became the focus of his campaign. Yeşilgöz of Mark Rutte’s VVD also made this his main concern. The 46-year-old, who comes from a Turkish-Kurdish family of Alevi origin, describes herself as an atheist and is married to a Dutch Jew, came to the Netherlands when she was an eight-year-old girl. She wants to radically curb migration, just like Pieter Omtzigt, a conservative “rebel” with his new NSC party. Even Caroline van der Plas (56) of the new farmers-citizens movement, BBB, which became the strongest political force in March’s regional elections with its anti-climate protection policies, has made containing migration her main issue. Only the Green Social Democrat Timmermans does not participate.
A violent incident occurred in Groningen on Monday night. The main candidate of the right-wing extremist party FvD, Thierry Baudet, had a beer bottle stuck in his head during his participation in the election campaign. He had to be treated at the hospital.