The video below constitutes “inside baseball” from Dutch politics, to some extent. It shows Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) speaking in Parliament about the fact that he and his party have been shut out from negotiations concerning the formation of a new government, which have been going on since the elections on March 15. In other words, the cordon sanitaire around the PVV is still in place.
You can also see the usual parliamentary ankle-biters pestering Mr. Wilders with their niggling questions.
In the video, the word informateur is subtitled as “informant” or “informer”. Normally this word would not be translated, but left in the original (which is French, anyway), since the English parliamentary system never produced a position with a comparable function.
Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan gave us a brief overview of the informateur’s function back in January:
Tradition says that the winner of the elections can appoint an informateur (inquirer), or, if the polls are very tight or negotiations are expected to be difficult, a pre-informateur (pre-inquirer). Not that long ago this was a royal prerogative. The queen could appoint anyone she wanted, and didn’t have to explain why. A few years ago this royal prerogative was taken away and given to Parliament.
So, the chair will appoint someone to consult all parties, write down with whom they want to govern, with whom they don’t, and under what conditions. This takes a couple of days, and he reports back to the chair. Based on the results, further consultation will take place, until it’s reasonably certain a cabinet can be formed. Then the informateur becomes formateur: he will form a cabinet and become its leader as prime minister. It’s customary to appoint an elderly statesmen or politician to do this inquiring. When the negotiations are nearly finished, a new informateur will be appointed, who will be asked to become formateur. The whole circus can be over in a fortnight, but it can also take a full year. There is no time limit. In Belgium the record is 2.5 years.
Here’s Geert Wilders talking about the informateur and the boycott of the PVV, all the while parrying the ankle-biters:
Wilders is on form
He’s got, as we say over here, “overschot van gelijk”. Wilders, I mean. (excess of being right would be a somewhat decent translation). As a Fleming, this situation, where ALL the other parties have simply placed Wilders and the PVV off limits – literally making political pariahs of them – is SOOOOO familiar. The PVV knows now to the fullest measure what a ‘cordon sanitaire’ is. In Belgium, the VB has been in this situation since… 1977, the year it was founded. Yes, 40 years.
On a lighter note: at the 1:33 mark, who is the redhead lady with the ample cleavage?
You don’t get many of those to the pound. Sorry, not pc; you don’t get many of those to the half-kilo!
Yes, the lady with the embonpoint does provide some good cheer, amidst the disgusting spectacle of Leftists, of various complexions, defecating all over the democracy of their great country. I think, by her glances and smiles, that she rather fancies Geert!
However, a more revealing glimpse (in another sense), is of another lady, towards the end of the clip: She’s of attractive appearance, very fashionable, but – appallingly – is drawing something slimy and green and disgusting out of a drinking-glass; witch-like, she is clearly concocting an evil potion of some sort – – –
Perhaps David Icke is right after all? – at least metaphorically: These are not human beings, but actually something reptilian and evil defiling the likeness of man, and walking amongst us like Demons, to damn us.
The image has evidently been caught on the fly by some quick-witted TV editor in the studio with a sneaking sympathy for Mr Wilders. It is strangely powerful – almost like a disturbingly surreal image in a David Lynch film.
Something truly horrible is coming to pass, if these are the representatives of a mature European nation. The witch-woman made me shudder.
“She’s of attractive appearance, very fashionable, but – appallingly – is drawing something slimy and green and disgusting out of a drinking-glass; witch-like, she is clearly concocting an evil potion of some sort – – –”
I checked her out, but, uh, I wouldn’t immediately label her as attractive.
I admit that only know I listened to the whole speech. Geert Wilders is a giant among pygmys.
But that redhead woman…. sheesh. Smo-king HOT.
Were you a more careful reader, you might have understood that I am utterly repelled by the appalling – even obscurely indecent – aura of this only superficially attractive woman. I find her disgusting little ritual immediately repulsive.
She seems like the presiding sinister genius of that coven of Leftists, with all their fashionable perversities, writhing in their hellish anguish at the spectacle of an untouchably moral and decent soul standing upright and hurling curses upon them!
Geert Wilders is a Man – a simple, decent human being, no more and no less – who finds himself cast amidst creatures of the Abyss: As anyone who has followed his career and heard him speak of course already knows, he represents political and moral salvation from the Hell created by the imbibers of doctrinally foul concoctions who now rule this world – –
The delightful, delicious red-headed and rubicund lady is no doubt a healthful projection of Rubenesque humanism, and thus a refreshing antidote to the poison-decanting witch who lurks elsewhere in the chamber of the Dutch Parliament.
So I, too, find the Rubens beauty a grateful vision to rest my gaze upon, especially as she smiles pleasantly when Wilders bests some be-suited husk of devious demonology. I’m sure all decent people would find her a blessed relief from that otherwise revolting spectacle of ideological Hell.
‘Smoking’ is hardly the epithet you should use to condemn the only person who should be rescued from the flames to which the rest of those Benches of Pandaemonium should be consigned!
Rather, it is the Witch-in-Chief who dabbles in green slime whom you should most hope to see burning, as Hell is surely her real home.
A friendly warning in parting: Do not involve yourself in these arcane conjurations, lest you, too, are burned – – –
Geert stands firm ,foursquare ,immovable as the rock of ages ,strengthened by the courage of his own honorable convictions.But the other parties are carried away by nothing more than a puerile desire to be as spiteful as possible and the exuberance of their own verbosity.
I’m afraid that there isn’t much of ‘exuberance’ – ‘the quality of being full of energy, excitement, and cheerfulness, or ebullience’ – about those homilies (I apply the word in the sense of ‘tedious moralizing lectures’) the delivery of which dully animates the political group-think. And if the Members of Parliament were only pettishly ‘spiteful,’ they would not make of themselves this thoroughly repellent spectacle.
These unthinking servants of an outworn ‘multicultural’ ideology are no longer capable of honesty or of contemplating reform: They see before them a prophet of a hopeful new age, but the only reaction they can summon is to hurl their dogmatic brickbats at him.
The contrast between these politically inadequate betrayers of their country’s democratic desires, and the unwavering courage of Geert Wilders in the defence of his Nation, is shocking.
An honourable man, indeed – as you say.
He stands as perhaps the greatest defender of the Netherlands since a mob martyred the De Witt brothers – or since the royally betrayed Admiral Michiel de Ruyter was sacrificed in an irrelevant fight.
One can even see in him something of the noble Count Egmont, who was abandoned because of the cowardice of his people, when he fought for justice and national liberty in opposition to despotic authority, but who accepted the dire consequences of acting straightforwardly and honestly.
Geert Wilders has already done far better for his great country, by seeking to gather the Resistance against what really is the most terrible threat to it since the Nazi’s murderous invasion, than those Quislings who have turned against their own Nationhood – and he could accomplish so much more were he not effectively bound and gagged by a shameful national conspiracy to restrain and silence him!
A great People would fight for that sort of vision – this is why the nonentities presently in power gibber at Wilders in their fear and hate: It would be their miserable jobs and privileges at stake if he ever got democracy to work again!
And possibly there would be some cases where treason should be argued – and the full penalty for it – – –
“In Belgium the record is 2.5 years.”
Amusing that the Belgians cannot get two groups to work together to form a government but they are obsessed with multiculturalism.
Of course, the point is they COULD work together, if they weren’t far more concerned with excluding Wilders than they are in actually taking account of the democratic wishes of the Dutch voters!
But this chamber isn’t a Parliament any more – it is a place where Political Correctness is preached, and where heretics like Wilders must be destroyed in a show-trial.
The interjections from the floor have the air of summary judgement, seeking to cast Wilders in the role of prisoner at the bar: Characters unwholesomely redolent of Roland Freisler hurl words of blatant character-assassination at him.
The Witch-woman meanwhile continues to dunk the noxious substance of her mephitic existence – making the prescription that will murder the immortal Soul of an entire nation.