There’s an old saying in The Hague: who breaks, pays. In other words, parties that break up a ruling coalition are punished by voters in the following elections. The social democrats experienced this in recent decades, and so did the right-wing parties. In 2002, Pim Fortuyn’s LPF swept the polls. But after prematurely abandoning the ruling coalition, the party itself got swept out of existence.
Damages
The same fate could be awaiting Geert Wilders. After seven weeks of negotiations, he withdrew from discussions on economic policy on 21 April, leaving the ruling coalition in the lurch. It costs The Netherlands billions to postpone economic reform till 2013. New elections will cost nearly a billion extra, according to estimates. And the PVV took the country to the edge of disaster, with credit ratings agencies ready to slash Holland’s pristine standing.
How will Wilders do in September’s elections? The media is pointedly ignoring the party at present, and even the right-wing VVD party is indicating that it wouldn’t rush into a coalition with the PVV in the future. But voters are still willing to give Wilders the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps that will change in the lead up to elections.
A new chance for Rutte
The crisis also created some political winners. Minister of Finance, Jan Kees de Jager, shone like a diamond in the dark days after the cabinet fell. Within 48 hours he had managed to summon up a majority of MPs to support an economic reform package. If his accomplishment doesn’t redound to the credit of his party (christian democrats) in the forthcoming elections, it will be because the party is lacking a clear programme and a leader.
Premier Rutte has profited from his transparent leadership. Despite the disappointment he had to swallow when his cabinet fell, he dusted himself off and performed well, holding open discussions with his political opponents. ‘Given the seriousness of the financial crisis,’ he said, ‘we have to abandon narrow party interests.’ If he manages to maintain good scores in the polls, he’s likely to be putting together another cabinet in six months time.
The left-wing, by contrast, hasn’t benefitted from the fall of the government. The Socialist Party (SP) grew in the last months and is now the largest in the polls. But since the political storm, that expansion has dampened. The social democrats (PvdA) lost five seats in the wake of the crisis, according to the polls. That’s nearly a quarter of their supporters, a huge blow. It resulted from the political clumsiness of the new leader, Diederik Samsom, who played hardball during the negotiations for a solution to the crisis. Samsom got his party sidelined as a result. Rutte and De Jager stitched up a deal with his competitors.
New elections will be held on September 12. Keep reading The International Correspondent for extensive coverage of the Dutch political and economic scene as the country negotiates this eventful period in our history.
Floris Mulle
