Dutch elections

[iaoish]

Dutch vote may herald important shift to left

By Marlise Simons / The New York Times
Published: November 22, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/23/europe/web.1123dutch.php

THE HAGUE: The Dutch appeared sure to keep their prime minister, the conservative Jan Peter Balkenende, based on preliminary results from the general elections on Wednesday.

But the results also showed that the new government would probably shift to the left, signaling challenges to come on recent tough anti-immigration measures and on cutbacks in social welfare programs.

With 98 percent of the votes counted, the prime minister's Christian Democrat Party remained the largest, but it lacked the votes to form a government by itself. Its partner in government until now, the rightist Liberal Party, lost ground, so Balkenende will have to turn to the larger left-of-center Labor Party and others for help.

Negotiations to form a cabinet may take weeks. But the results of the elections, which had a turnout of 80 percent, showed a more polarized country. Small groups on both the far left and the far right made large gains at the expense of the parties closer to the political center.

Balkenende, 50, conceded that the results would mean difficult negotiations to form a parliamentary majority.

His party, which appeared to win 41 of Parliament's 150 seats, will be deeply at odds with the Labor Party, with 32 seats, on critical issues like social spending, taxes, pensions and immigration policy.

"We are the biggest, but the result is complicated," Balkenende told cheering supporters. "We now need determination and cool heads."

In a first for Europe, a party advocating animal welfare will have two seats in Parliament. Marianne Thieme, the leader of the Party for Animals, has campaigned to curb experiments and inhumane large-scale industrial breeding and slaughter.

But the greatest surprise was the gain by the far left Socialist Party, led by Jan Marijnissen, an outspoken advocate for the working class. A former welder and once a Maoist, Marijnissen led the party from its inflexible Communist roots to become a broad protest movement that gained wide backing from people of various political stripes, as well as artists and intellectuals.

Nicknamed the Wizard of Oss, after his hometown, he became famous when he turned out to be one of the main architects of the Dutch vote that rejected the European Constitution in June 2005.

His party appeared to win 26 seats, a leap from its previous 9 seats, which makes it the third-largest bloc. The party's symbol is a tomato, which is meant to evoke a handy weapon to throw at fat cats and power-hungry politicians.

"I'm a deeply happy man today," Marijnissen said. "It means that several million people have said they want a more caring society."

His group has called for more teachers, more care for the elderly, free child care and more public transportation.

He and Wouter Bos, the leader of the Labor Party, have both pledged to fight for amnesty for the thousands of failed asylum seekers, many of them in hiding, who are awaiting deportation from the Netherlands.

But this does not mean the country has wholly changed its anti-immigrant direction. The new far-right Party of Freedom, led by Gerrit Wilders, won nine seats on an anti-immigration platform. One of Wilders's favorite slogans is, "Stop the influence of Islam in the Netherlands." Many Dutch resent the recent arrival of close to a million Muslims in their midst, many from Morocco and Turkey.

Balkenende has supported immigration restrictions and has urged both Muslims and the Dutch to make greater efforts at integrating the newcomers.

Above all, Balkenende has been a calming presence during the past four years of turmoil, including two political murders and often rancorous anti-immigration, anti-Muslim debates.

Long derided as dull and homey, it appears he and his party are still favored by voters who want social peace and like his emphasis on the need for more decency, less crime and more respect for civic values.

"I voted Balkenende because I don't want a leftist government that hits us with taxes and lets immigrants live on welfare," said Loes Fijneman, a storeowner.

"But he has to insist that Muslims respect our way of life. Christians are also expected to abide by the rules in Muslim countries."

 

[iaoish]

The Netherlands election

The Netherlands election

Going Dutch
Nov 23rd 2006 | AMSTERDAM
From The Economist print edition

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8327471

HE HAS run three rickety cabinets in four years, presided over his country's slide towards being more intolerant and inward-looking and his economic reforms have been unpopular. He personally has been criticised and ridiculed. Meet Jan Peter Balkenende, prime minister, leader of the Christian Democrats—and the apparent winner of this week's Dutch election.

His bounce-back from earlier lows was less surprising than it sounds. Opinions are divided on the merits of Mr Balkenende's reforms, but nobody disputes that, after a long period in the doldrums, the economy is doing well. So are his voters: the Dutch white middle class is gaining most from the upturn and it remains nostalgic for the old-style burgher values that this awkward political leader oozes.

Yet the Christian Democrats' victory was less than convincing. They took 41 of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, enough to give Mr Balkenende first stab at assembling a governing coalition. But his preferred cabinet is not on the menu. His loyal partner throughout the past three governments, the Liberals (VVD), suffered a setback, taking only 22 seats. That leaves the two parties 13 seats short of a majority.

The VVD campaigned on promises of more reforms and tougher anti-immigration policies. Last week the VVD immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, called for the abolition of the equality commission after it ruled that a female Muslim schoolteacher was entitled to refuse to shake hands with men on religious grounds. And she announced that the government would ban the wearing of the all-covering Muslim burqa or niqab in public. None of this did the VVD much good, but it may have helped to push up the vote for Geert Wilders's newly formed Freedom Party, which campaigned to close the borders to all non-western immigrants, and took nine seats.

Even this would not be enough to bridge the gap that the Christian Democrats and the VVD must fill, and they are anyway disinclined to work with the maverick Mr Wilders. Mr Balkenende may instead find himself negotiating a “grand coalition” with the opposition Labour Party, led by his chief political opponent, Wouter Bos. Labour took 32 seats, but even this is not enough to sustain a grand coalition.

Mr Bos had made no secret of his ambitions to have Mr Balkenende's job, but he ended up one of the election's big losers. Some backbenchers blamed his liberal economic views for putting off Labour voters. Many went to the Socialist Party, run by a former Maoist, Jan Marijnissen. Blending leftish populism with isolationism and nationalism, Mr Marijnissen rallied some of the support that, four years ago, catapulted Pim Fortuyn, another populist, onto the political stage. His party took 26 seats, leapfrogging the VVD to become the country's third-biggest. Mr Bos has already asked Mr Balkenende to involve Mr Marijnissen in the coalition bargaining, but it will not be easy for other parties to find common ground with him.

A centre-left coalition is what many observers on all sides of the political spectrum secretly hope for. Mr Balkenende's government may have been good for the economy, but his four years have left a scar in the social tissue of a country that is still trying to come to terms with its multicultural, multi-ethnic nature—and especially with its Muslim population of 1m (out of 16m in all). Many would like to see the abrasive Ms Verdonk lose her job.

Both Christian Democrats and Labour steered clear of the issues of immigration and Islam in the campaign, and also avoided discussing the European Union, though attempts are under way to revive all or part of the constitution that Dutch voters rejected in 2005. This wariness reflects continuing fears of anti-elite feeling—and suggests that the Dutch have not yet got over the 2004 murder of an outspoken film-maker, Theo van Gogh, by a Muslim fanatic. As Gerrit Zalm, the outgoing VVD finance minister, summed up the election: “It's anarchy. It is extremely difficult to distil a government out of these results.”

 

[iaoish]

A strong showing for a far-right party in the Dutch elections

Islam in Europe

Hostility at home
Nov 23rd 2006
From Economist.com

A strong showing for a far-right party in the Dutch elections

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8325991&top_story=1

ONCE a country renowned for tolerance of minorities of all stripes, the Netherlands now risks being known for an ugly debate over its growing Muslim population. As preliminary results emerged from general elections on Wednesday November 22nd, it became clear that a previously insignificant far-right party, the Party For Freedom, may claim as many as nine seats in a parliament of 150. The party had campaigned for a halt to all immigration, and in particular was hostile towards Muslims, calling for a ban on the building of religious schools and mosques and for a ban on veils worn by Muslim women.

At its head is Geert Wilders, a man seen by some as the heir to Pim Fortuyn—a populist politician and outspoken critic of the 1m-strong Muslim population in the Netherlands, whose anti-immigrant party won 26 seats in parliament shortly after he was murdered in 2002. On Wednesday Mr Wilders told Dutch television that “we need more decency in this country, more education and less Islam”. He is unlikely to form any part of the new coalition government, which will be led by the moderate Christian Democratic Alliance. But he may yet influence policy. His relative success seems to reflect a deep unease about how to integrate the large Dutch-Muslim population.

Earlier this year Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim politician of Somali origin (and an outspoken critic of fundamentalist Islam), said she was leaving the Netherlands for America. Among other things, she was apparently fed up with the awkward debate about the place of Islam in Dutch society. And though the Dutch election was about more than immigration and Islam, these issues played a part. The outgoing government, led by immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, also proposed that the face-covering burqa and niqab should be banned in all public places.

The Netherlands certainly has reason for deep soul-searching over its Muslim population, given the murder of Mr Fortuyn and of an anti-Islam filmmaker in the past few years. But dress seems an unappealing place to start. Elsewhere in Europe it has too easily become a symbol for politicians to manipulate. France has banned the wearing of all religious symbols in schools, a law clearly aimed at the Muslim headscarf. The ban, perhaps predictably, made the headscarf a sign of pride for many Muslim girls. Germany, recently, has moved in the same direction. Four states have banned teachers from wearing headscarves. But Muslims know that Germany would never ban Jewish headwear, and they feel singled out. Britain’s former foreign secretary and a Labour Party heavyweight, Jack Straw, recently said he believed that wearing the veil could harm community relations. Tony Blair expressed support for a school that fired a teacher for wearing the face-covering veil. Various towns in Belgium have also banned the niqab.

Instead the Dutch might look across the Atlantic. A slew of recent books by smug, mostly conservative American authors might be unhelpful. (Some with titles like “While Europe Slept”, “America Alone” and “The Death of the West”, argue that Europe has allowed immigration and Islam to undermine Western values from within). But there is something to learn from America. American laws on freedom of expression and religion are more permissive than those in Europe. Only those who mask their faces explicitly to hide themselves and intimidate others—like the Ku Klux Klan—are forbidden to cover their faces in public forums like marches. A law banning the burqa would be flatly unconstitutional. So, probably, would be a ban on headscarves in schools. And America’s success with its Muslims probably also owes something to the flexible American labour market, which gives minorities of all kinds the hope (if not the reality) of climbing the social ladder.

 

[StumpDizzle]

Tony Blair expressed support for a school that fired a teacher for wearing the face-covering veil..

Thats pretty fucked up