The cartoon below was today posted on the website of Dutch liberal quality newspaper NRC. Just for a bit of contextualisation, Fokke & Sukke are the duck and chicken we need to have politics and society explained to ourselves in the Netherlands. The text runs: "Fokke & Sukke...were summoned." Upon which Fokke, walking out of a palace, says: "Uff.. For a moment we were afraid that it was Wilders who called on us..." Then Sukke: "But it was only the queen". The cartoon wrily gets to the core of the current situation of the cabinet formation.
Long formation? Ask grandpa!
We are currently on day 98 after the election results of the parliament became known, and still there we are not even close to knowing what sort of coalition will rule the Netherlands until 2014. Strange? Well, our political tradition is just a bit different. Historically, we've had a number of very long formation processes, the longest of which lasted even 208 days (1977), 163 days (1972-3), and 125 days (2003). That last date reveals that even in recent times long discussions and political bickering precede generally quite stable coalitions. Paving the way in great detail continues to be needed, since the political landscape is increasingly scattered, with every time fewer parties that may act as "natural leaders".
Political chess of the right-wing type
After the elections of 2010, controversial politician Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) have been playing a rather succesful game of chess. Emerging as the third largest party in parliament, they were initially shielded away from coalition talks for their somewhat radical and blunt profile. But clever manoeuvering and sexy soundbites ("they are slamming the door on us, ignoring 1.5 millions of voters") won him ever more virtual support. Eventually, in the middle of the summer, PVV was included in talks along with the winning reformist liberals (VVD), and the losing centrist christian-democrats (CDA) - an odd bunch, to say the least. Wilders, negotiating the coalition in person along with leaders of the other parties, has since skillfully practiced a mixture of self-confident arrogance and cooperativeness, thereby managing to play himself, and not his senior VVD leader Rutte, into the spotlight as the traditionally secretive talks proceeded. A construction was created whereby VVD and CDA would form a minority coaltion with PVV's support votes in parliament. When just over a week ago MPs of the CDA publicly announced some reservations about governing with the support of the nationalist-conservative (read: islamophobe) PVV, Wilders skillfully used his broker position by putting an ultimatum on the table for the christian-democrats. Either the three public dissident MPs had to clear the way, or PVV would no longer participate in talks.
What principle on earth rules this country?
This creates an interesting momentary deadlock. Wilders' party, with around one-sixth of parliamentary seats, is holding the slightly smaller and demoralised CDA in an iron grip which it is hardly used to. Since Wilders' ultimatum, one CDA dissident has already cleared the way, stating moral objections against governing with PVV support. Upon which Wilders drily stated: "There are still two dissidents left". One could easily imagine the king on his throne: "What are you waiting for? Bring me those traitors!". And in the current situation, he somehow gets away with it.
And so the coalition formation process continues to be followed by Dutch voters with feelings ranging between awe (left-progressive Dutch voters) and satisfaction (among anti-establishment, nationalist-conservative voters), but mostly a good dose of apathy (everybody). And when the progressive part of the country thought it had seen politics from its ugliest side, there was a twist. News has come in that the ultra-christian SGP has been invited to join the talks. "Who joins me in lying under a stone until this is all over", a friend posted on his Facebook account. To be continued, certainly with more mud throwing to come.
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