Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Dutch Far-Right Brings Down Government
The far-right Freedom Party [PVV by its Dutch acronym] has withdrawn from the ruling coalition of the Netherlands. As a result, the Prime Minister has resigned and will stay on as caretaker until a new coalition can be formed or until an election produces a new government. The sticking point was immigration, and the Freedom Party was angry that the three other parties in government were not as anti-foreigner as it is. The other parties claim Geert Wilders, the PVV leader, puts the country second and his ego first. The world would be better off it the Dutch hold a new election and the PVV goes back into opposition.
Bloomberg explained, "Wilders, 61, has been a fixture in Dutch politics for decades. As the longest-serving lawmaker, he has been focused on immigration and Islam, as he has called for fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands and for banning Muslim immigration, mosques and the Koran . . . .
"The Freedom Party 'has promised to the voters to enact the strictest asylum policy ever,' Wilders said in a television interview earlier Tuesday. 'I had no other choice now than to say we'll withdraw our support for this government -- I let the prime minister know that we’ll pull our ministers from the cabinet and that we can’t bear any further responsibility for this'."
CNBC stated"
The leaders of the other coalition parties accused Wilders of putting his own interests ahead of the needs of the country. "He chooses his own ego and his own interests,” Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, leader of [previous PM] Rutte's former party, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, told Dutch broadcaster NOS in Google-translated comments.
"I am astonished. He is throwing away the chance of a right-wing policy. This is super irresponsible," she said.
The Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) party said in a statement that Wilders had single-handedly pulled the plug on the government. "Governing the country is something different than threatening on social media," said Caroline van der Plas, leader of the BBB.
For ages, the FP was denied access to ministerial portfolios because none of the other Dutch parties would work with it. The fascist tendencies of the party were unpalatable to many Children of the Occupation, who prefer freedom to Freedom. However, in 2023, Dutch voters made the Freedom Party the largest in the Dutch legislature. Parliamentary arithmetic forced them to compromise. It was never a comfortable arrangement.
The New York Times noted, "Together, the four parties held 88 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, a comfortable majority. But in a sign of how uncomfortable their arrangement was, the parties agreed not to name any of their own leaders as prime minister. Instead they settled on Mr. [Dick] Schoof, a civil servant with no elective office or party affiliation."
This journal anticipates an election some time this autumn. The remainder of the coalition will govern as a minority care-taker, and they will try to enlist another party to bring them back up to majority status. The Dutch system has a habit of taking a long time, and these negotiations probably will not succeed. They will, however, take a few months to play out. As a result, the election is morel ikely in October than July.
One must remember that the current government is right-of-center, and that this is the era of vote-the-bums-out. Mr. Wilders may have just set the Netherlands on a left-ward, more open immigration path. He is in his own way. Dutch voters should send him on his way.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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