It’s been four months since the Dutch parliamentary elections, but a government has still not been formed. Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan sends this report with the latest on what’s happening in the land of windmills and minarets.
The way of the dhimmi
by H Numan
It’s been quite a while since the Dutch elections on the 15th of March. A lot of water flowed through the Rhine, but no cabinet any time soon. Coalition governments usually have difficulty getting off the ground. This is no exception. The record is 222 days in 1804, but that was before the kingdom was founded in 1813. So that doesn’t really count. The cabinet of van Agt (CDA) in 1977 holds the record with 202 days.
To recap: the present coalition government lost the elections, but won. Sounds a bit weird, but it isn’t. The VVD-PvdA coalition parties both lost: the VVD went down from 41 to 33 seats. The PvdA was murdered by going from 38 seats down to a mere 9. It’s clear: they both lost. However, the VVD remained the largest party. Therefore the VVD won the elections. Even though they lost 25%. The PVV party came in second with 20 seats, up from 15. That doesn’t matter at all, as almost all parties boycott the PVV. Even if it had doubled from 15 to 30 it wouldn’t matter much.
First an ‘engine block’ of willing parties was found. These are the VVD together with CDA (Christian Democrats) and D66 (left-wing liberals). Together they have 71 seats, not enough. They need at least one more party to form a workable coalition. A majority government needs at least 76 seats. The first attempt was made by inviting GreenLeft (GL). Yasser Feras, or Jesse Klaver, was happier than a dog with ten tails for that honor, and made an absolute fool of himself. It took a long time before he said no.
Next up was the marginally less extreme left-wing CU party, the Christian Union. These are staunch Dutch Calvinists who live by the gospel. According to Marx, that is. I’m not writing a War & Peace novel here, but you have to know that D66 and CU are diametrically opposite. D66 wants to introduce an unlimited euthanasia bill, which the CU abhors. The D66 leader Pechtold made sure negotiations lasted mere minutes.
Back to the dog still wagging its ten tails again. Yasser Feras, or Jesse Klaver, in other words. Another round of negotiations, and… almost a cabinet there… then… Yasser said no. Of course, because he fancies himself as vice premier, but his party would have to vote over it and they would absolutely vote no. The VVD beds with everyone; so does the CDA and D66, but not so the former communists. The party brass? Of course, but not the members. Yasser probably knew that all along.
The negotiator gave up. Another one was found. This was Tjeenk Willink, a leftover fossil (75) and a member of the PvdA (Labor) party. The party that got murdered. The absolute total loser of all elections ever held in our country. Never before has a party lost 29 seats in one election. They are as dead as the dodo? Not quite. More about that anon.
Tjeenk firmly told the bad kiddies to behave and be friends. All that nonsense of ‘I don’t want to govern with him’, or ‘if he goes in, I go out’. Start working together! Except, of course, with the PVV. He told the parties to put up or shut up, and start negotiating with the CU. They did. Knowing full well summer recess was near. Tjeenk’s age counts; he had to give up as well. Now it is summer recess with a third negotiator, Gerrit Zalm.
You folks don’t know this chappie. He was VVD minister for finance. Under his guidance The Netherlands gave away the guilder for 10% under its value to enter the Euro. He was rewarded with the stewardship of ABN/AMRO bank when it nearly went bankrupt. After that he was promoted to CEO of ABN/AMRO.
Parliament is now enjoying a well-deserved holiday from June until September. Don’t expect anything drastic right now. Behind the scenes negotiations of course continue. After his very rude refusal to work together with the CU, D66 probably will have to go a long way in making compromises. The VVD-CDA-D66-CU is the last option for a workable cabinet. Everybody knows that, and everybody knows Pechtold vastly overplayed his hand.
Now back to the living death. The PvdA got murdered, right? Well, the zombie is crawling out of the grave. Those 29 poor labor parliamentarians need a job. The first one to hit the jackpot was Ahmed Marcouch. He was appointed mayor of Arnhem. John Frost spun around in his grave a couple of times. Got out of it, and violently threw up. Then moved away with tears in his eyes. Who is Ahmed Marcouch? He’s an immigrant who came to my country at the tender age of 10. He worked for a while with the Amsterdam police before joining the Labor party. He is well known for his outspoken politics.
For example, he proposed to set up a 100% muslim ghetto. He wanted, for community cohesion of course, to move all non-mohammedans out of an area of Amsterdam, and repopulate it with mohammedans only.
Marcouch doesn’t like the PVV party. He said openly that the police shouldn’t hire people who vote for the PVV, or fire them if they know they do.
Ahmed likes the Muslim Brotherhood, though. He has no quarrel there.
That’s the new mayor of Arnhem. He isn’t the only news PvdA mayor. Jan Hamming will become mayor of Zaanstad.
The mayor of Amsterdam is Eberhard van der Laan. He suffers from cancer, so the new mayor will in all likelihood be Femke Halsema.
She isn’t PvdA but GreenLeft. She was leader of the party, but left politics. Exactly the day after she was entitled to a full parliamentary pension. If you can manage to serve 12 years in parliament, you get full retirement benefits until the day you die. She is also a antique car enthusiast. I normally wouldn’t mention it, but it’s relevant here. The most environmentally friendly party we have is Green Left. It’s a bit weird, to say the least, that the leader of that party prefers to drive a Mercedes 230 D rather then her party Toyota Prius.
That old car is less polluting than a Trabant, but not by much. Some pigs are more equal than other pigs, aren’t they?
There are a whole bunch of other cities and comfy important jobs where out-of-work PvdA parliamentarians are being parked right now. The tenure of those jobs is 4-6 years. So the party is assured that for the coming six years they keep control of things. The electorate doesn’t like the PvdA anymore? Who cares? The electorate would like less islamisation? Not going to happen, folks.
For example, pupils of primary schools now are required to visit mosques. Required. Parents do not have a choice. If their religious view doesn’t allow for it, tough luck. The truant officer will get you. Fine? Between €300 and €500. No exceptions are given. Not only do they have to visit mosques, they also are ‘asked’ to join in prayers.
For the few of you who don’t know this: saying prayers effectively makes one a muslim. It’s now purely technical, but in a couple of years those innocent kids could well face apostasy trials. It’s not mutual, though. Christian, Jewish and non religious kids are required to visit mosques and pray there. But not the other way around. There are no school visits to churches or synagogues that I have heard about. Supposing there are, muslim children definitely will not attend, much less pray there. Without a visit from the truant officer.
Want to make money fast? Collect some Jizya?
Go to court for a discriminatory offense. Such as this one: A school, the Maria Montessori school in The Hague, informed parents well in advance about a coming school photo shoot. A mohammedan family kept their daughter at home on that particular day because they wanted to celebrate eid al adha, the feast of sacrifice. Non-mohammedan (=dhimmi) parents cannot do that without a visit from the truant officer accompanied by the police. Since this is a mohammedan family, no problem.
But the mother wanted more. She went to court and claimed €10,000 in damages as the school hadn’t properly informed her, and her daughter suffered immense psychological damage. The court accepted her claim and ordered the school to pay €500 in compensation. According to the court, informing parents five months in advance is not good enough.
Another headline is the news that the police intentionally kept figures about criminality amongst refugees secret, as they are astounding. One in every six migrants commits crimes that warrant immediate extradition. They aren’t even prosecuted.
As you can see, the PVV party has a tough job ahead. I’m pretty certain Hercules would say to Wilders: “Man, I wouldn’t want to trade places with you. Cleaning King Augeas’ stables is child’s play compared with your work.”
That’s not all, but three pages of A4 is enough for today. The Dutch commandos are ‘temporarily’ on hold, for example. No ammunition. No training facilities. No proper clothing. That money is better spend on our submission.
I used to think the PvdA and GL were very bad for the country. Now I realize the VVD is far more dangerous.
— H. Numan
Don’t worry, Dutch refugees are welcome in Bohemia 😉
Dear Mr. Numan, I like your post-election analysis; especially the PvdA part in which they appear to succeed in holding and extending power at the municipal level. My hunch is that there will be new elections end of this year; not that that will change much as we remain a rather naive but still nice country: windmills and dhimmies in a flower setting.
This sort of knuckle dragging Neanderthal proto leftism leaves Europe defenseless. The machinations of Mohamedist will only have possibly the Dutch intelligence agencies as a bulwark to defend the homeland when th[ings go bad]! Europe is comatose.
Can one not see the somewhat Muslim-affiliated “Denk” party ending up as a part of the coalition, and extracting something that will later lead to more voters for it, for example easier naturalisation of existing immigrants in some subtle way that isn’t so obvious on the surface?
Really hard to imagine living in Holland. Parents in the US have many choices when it comes to education. I homeschooled. We also have charters, Catholic schools, private schools, you name it! If kids were forced to visit a mosque, they’d probably revolt and/or switch schools or homeschool.
Dutch parents should consider a move to the US if possible.
I want to agree with you, Adam, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t trust the Dutch immigrants not eventually to vote, in large numbers if not in a large majority, for the socialist policies that are championed by the dhimmi party here in the US.
I have meet a number of Europeans, and many are very naive, quick to accuse others of injustice, and can be very self righteous, like a religion.
Many from Europe, not only the young, are very socialist.
Sure they are nice people, but really have no knowledge of islam, and nor do they want to learn ! or understand the economics of how their ponzi schemes of social welfare, pensions, etc.
The educations system sets them up for this, and if they comply there will be a governmental tick box job or join a major size company, that has personnel managers etc.
If you do not fit the box, then you can be considered as right winger, and not fit the box.
A belief system as thorough as islam is to “unbelievers” as being the “dirty kaffir”.
Well rules are necessary and are made to be blindly followed. No questions allowed.
Not so negative. Dutch emigrants going to America are rarely left wing orientated. If active in politics, they are far more likely to go tea party than communist party. Or Democrat party, if there still is a difference.
I have to say, that the only Dutch immigrant that I have known well was my roommate in college back in the early 60’s. She was very nice and I liked her, but she was P.C. leftist to the point that she would still fit in that mold today without changing her views. She told me that she didn’t like some very pleasant, popular girls on the grounds that they were “too Christian” (They were mainline Protestants and didn’t like Evangelical doctrines, but as people, I liked and admired them very much.) Then she told me about the superiority of Islam, and loaned me a Koran to read (English translation). Normally I tended to read just about anything that didn’t read me first, but somehow I couldn’t get into it, even though I wasn’t particularly against Islam at the time.
The 400,000 Dutch who immigrated to Australia in the 1950’s and 1960’s tended to vote Labor (a broad spectrum centre-left party with hard left, soft left and a –
dominant – “Centre Unity” faction which is kind of right wing social democrat).
One of their progeny, however, Andrew Bolt, is the leading conservative journalist in Oz. So it’s not genetic 🙂
Also, my interest in Islam was partly catalyzed in the late 1980’s by a TV interviewer, covering an incident where a “Muslims out!” graffito had been sprayed on a then-rare mosque, asking a respectable looking elderly couple walking past what did they think of this act.
“Good on them!” replied the man with an obvious residual Dutch accent. The young female interviewer was flabbergasted by his unexpected reply and stammered something which gave him the option of walking his comment back. “Muslims always cause trouble wherever they go in the world” the Dutchman stated firmly, turned and walked away. The desperate interviewer asked his wife: “Do you agree with him?” She said nothing and nervously hurried away to join her husband. His conviction and plain speaking made a big impression on me.
I’d take their Afrikaner cousins instead. I’d be pretty sure that those wouldn’t “turn” left-wing :-).
If I were Geert Wilders and the others got to the point where they had to consider me for a coalition, that’s what I’d hold out for: “repatriation” of Dutch descendents (i.e., Afrikaners).
You *know* that they’d be reliable PVV votes. Sounds like a nasty way to get votes?
Just think of what the others have done…
The raeders of GoV are most fortunate to have the insightful, informed and witty analysis of H.Numan on Dutch affairs.