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Can Geert Windlers survive multiple scandals?

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VVD-leader Mark Rutte campaigning in Amsterdam during the local elections Wikipedia

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Geert Wilders, who built his popularity on his maverick image, has been hit with a series of embarrassments from other mavericks in his own party who are accused of misconduct or violent behaviour before becoming freshman lawmakers.

The scandals swirling around Wilders’ Freedom Party highlight the fragility of the new minority coalition government, led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who needs the support of each one of Wilders’ parliament seats to stay in power in the Netherlands.

In the latest incident, a member of Wilders’ Freedom Party quit parliament Thursday amid reports he had hit an athlete with a spiked running shoe years ago and that a company he was involved with was fined for misleading consumers.

James Sharpe said he was quitting to spare his family from the intense scrutiny that members of Wilders’ party are being subjected to in the media.

He will be replaced by another party member after handing back his seat to Wilders, whose popularity is based largely on his tough anti-Islam rhetoric.

Last weekend, another Freedom Party legislator, Eric Lucassen, came under fire after reporters dug up a 2002 conviction for engaging in sexual relations with a subordinate when he was in the army. He also was twice fined for public order offences and harassing his neighbours.

On Monday, Wilders refused to fire Lucassen after Lucassen refused to relinquish his seat if he were forced to leave the party.

In one of the most significant setbacks to his meteoric rise in popularity, Wilders was forced to apologize to parliament and to his voters this week for the Lucassen scandal.

Another of Wilders’ lawmakers has conceded lying on his resume about having been a primary school principal.

Wilders has run into trouble with his hand-picked parliament members because, unlike traditional Dutch parties with deep roots, the Freedom Party is new and lacks a national organization capable of screening parliamentary candidates. It is essentially a one-man show.

Rutte, who took power after national elections in June, leads a coalition of his VVD party and the Christian Democrats. However, the two parties only have 52 of parliament’s 150 seats so he needs the support of all 24 Freedom Party lawmakers to enact legislation.

Dutch lawmakers can remain in parliament even if they are kicked out of their party. If Wilders had ejected Sharpe from his party the lawmaker could remain as an independent and Rutte would no longer be guaranteed a majority in key votes.

In a text message to The Associated Press, Wilders said of Sharpe: “I respect his decision to leave parliament.”

Wilders broke with Rutte’s VVD party in 2004 over its support for Turkey‘s membership in the European Union. In his first election, Wilders won 9 seats, and nearly tripled that in this year’s vote, thanks almost exclusively to Wilders’ tough anti-Islam rhetoric that tapped into a groundswell of resentment among many Dutch at the country’s growing Muslim minority.

Wilders’ popularity kept growing even after he was put on trial for hate speech for his anti-Islam comments. The trial was aborted last month after Wilders’ lawyer accused judges of bias and will restart next year. Lawmaker with Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party quits parliament amid reports of wrongdoing By: Mike Corder, The Associated Press. Posted: 18/11/2010 4:02 AM

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Can Geert Windlers survive multiple scandals?

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Wild Hooligans of Wilder's Dutch Freedom party

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A string of scandals within the Dutch far-right Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders has rocked the stability of the Netherlands’ new minority government.

The right-leaning minority coalition was formed last month after parliamentary elections in June in which the PVV increased its representation from nine to 24 members, making it the third largest party in the country.

James Sharpe, one of the PVV’s legislators, resigned on Thursday because of a row surrounding his criminal convictions, making him the seventh PPV member of parliament whose history has come under scrutiny from the Dutch media.

Sharpe resigned after the media reported that his Hungary-based internet dating company had been fined for misleading customers. The website of Sharpe’s company had tried to lure its users by featuring pictures of models that were not available for dating.

Sharpe, who was promptly replaced in parliament, denied any wrongdoing but “the evidence is all over the internet,” the Dutch newspaper nrc.next reported.

Several incidents

The incident was the latest in a wide range of scandals involving PVV politicians.

Media in Holland reported last week that Eric Lucassen, a former army instructor and PVV legislator, had been convicted of having sex with teenage soldiers under his command.

Lucassen concealed his criminal record during the vetting process for his candidacy. He also held back that he was fined for harassing his neighbours by urinating in one of his neighbours’ mailbox. The dispute revolved around the neighbour’s dog, which had allegedly defecated on Lucassen’s doorstep.

Before the scandal, Lucassen had been the PVV’s spokesman on neighbourhood issues.

Wilders apologised to voters and parliament because of the row, but refused to remove Lucassen from parliament.

“He will no longer speak on behalf of the PVV on defence or neighbourhood policy,” Wilders said.

Due to the PVV’s spectacular growth, the party had not carried out proper research into its candidates, Wilders said. The PVV leader said the disclosure of the incidents had not put the stability of the government at risk.

‘Dubious behaviour’

Five other PVV members of parliament have also come under media scrutiny for alleged dubious behaviour.

In 2006, Dion Graus allegedly tried to smother his highly pregnant wife after he had allegedly physically assaulted her. The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

Hero Brinkman, one of the party’s most outspoken politicians, came under media scrutiny after head-butting a waiter during a bar brawl.

In an unrelated incident earlier this year, Marcial Hernandez spent a night in jail after being arrested for his part in another bar fight. That case is still being investigated.

Jhim van Bemmel has been accused of bankruptcy fraud.

Richard de Mos lied on his CV, claiming to have been “head of a school” in a rough neighbourhood of The Hague, while he was in fact a teacher at a primary school. Asked about the allegations, De Mos said he had done a two-year course to become a school director and had all the necessary certificates.

Wilders himself is expected back in court early next year to face charges of inciting racial hatred.

In 2007, he branded the Quran as “fascist” and later released Fitna, an anti-Islam film that drew complaints from civil society groups. Wilders says the charges against him are politically motivated. The minority cabinet of the Christian Democrats (CDA) and Liberals (VVD) relies on the support of Wilders’ anti-Islam party to maintain a flimsy one-seat majority in parliament.

NRC Handelsblad, a daily newspaper, reported that the Christian Democrats are concerned about the reputation of a cabinet that has to depend on PVV legislators.

Opposition parties have called on Mark Rutte, the prime minister, to explain how the PVV’s record affects the stability of the government.

On Monday, Wilders refused to fire Lucassen after Lucassen refused to relinquish his seat if he were forced to leave the party.

In one of the most significant setbacks to his meteoric rise in popularity, Wilders was forced to apologize to parliament and to his voters this week for the Lucassen scandal.

Another of Wilders’ lawmakers has conceded lying on his resume about having been a primary school principal.

Wilders has run into trouble with his hand-picked parliament members because, unlike traditional Dutch parties with deep roots, the Freedom Party is new and lacks a national organization capable of screening parliamentary candidates. It is essentially a one-man show.

Rutte, who took power after national elections in June, leads a coalition of his VVD party and the Christian Democrats. However, the two parties only have 52 of parliament’s 150 seats so he needs the support of all 24 Freedom Party lawmakers to enact legislation.

Dutch lawmakers can remain in parliament even if they are kicked out of their party. If Wilders had ejected Sharpe from his party the lawmaker could remain as an independent and Rutte would no longer be guaranteed a majority in key votes.

In a text message to The Associated Press, Wilders said of Sharpe: “I respect his decision to leave parliament.”

Wilders broke with Rutte’s VVD party in 2004 over its support for Turkey’s membership in the European Union. In his first election, Wilders won 9 seats, and nearly tripled that in this year’s vote, thanks almost exclusively to Wilders’ tough anti-Islam rhetoric that tapped into a groundswell of resentment among many Dutch at the country’s growing Muslim minority.

Wilders’ popularity kept growing even after he was put on trial for hate speech for his anti-Islam comments. The trial was aborted last month after Wilders’ lawyer accused judges of bias and will restart next year.

Wild Hooligans of Wilder's Dutch Freedom party

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Netherlands will have two Foreign Ministers: Wilders and other

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Is the popular outburst of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment the complement to the new fatalism over the economy? If so, the current Dutch coalition maps perfectly onto this new kind of populist technocracy, writes Christopher Bickerton.

Geert Wilders, the Netherlands’ notorious rightwing extremist, is the subject of a bestselling new book by the Dutch academic Meindert Fennema, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Wilders — currently standing trial in an Amsterdam court, accused of inciting racial hatred — is the main power broker in an unsteady coalition that has finally been put together, after months of negotiations, between the Christian Democrat (CDA) and Liberal-Conservative (VVD) parties. The arrangement as it stands is that Wilders’ party, the Freedom Party (PVV), will provide parliamentary support for a CDA-VVD coalition.

As Meindert Fennema wryly puts it, the Netherlands will very soon have two foreign ministers: an official one, sitting in the cabinet and following the establishment line of Euro-Atlantic moderation; and an unofficial one — Geert Wilders, whose extreme anti-Islamic position is based on the premise that there can be no moderate Islam and any belief to the contrary will likely imperil western civilisation.

Wilders’ reputation now extends well beyond the narrow confines of Dutch politics. He most recently stirred controversy by giving a speech at Ground Zero in New York on the anniversary of 9/11. Wilders was denied entry into the UK in 2009 when he was invited to give a talk at a showing of his anti-Islam film, Fitna, at the House of Lords.

Wilders’ words chime with a wider set of concerns that pervade contemporary European politics: the problem of integrating Europe’s large minority of Muslim citizens, the fears of workers who see their wages undercut by inflows of cheap labour, and concern that western values are giving way to self-loathing and ethical relativism. Wilders articulates a sense of panic and estrangement that exists not only in the Netherlands but in many other European countries. It is the backdrop to Sarkozy’s move against the Roma in France, and the message of the controversial book published by the German central banker Thilo Sarrazin, Germany Is Destroying Itself.

Fennema has laid out his analysis of the situation in the Netherlands. The great mistake of the Dutch political class, he says, has been to declare Wilders an Islamophobic racist and to dismiss his views as abhorrent and outside the confines of acceptable political discourse. In attempting to silence Wilders, first politically and now through the law courts, the Dutch liberal elite have evaded the thorny question of how to respond to these concerns.

In writing a book that describes in intimate detail the figure of Wilders and his worldview, Fennema tried to see the world from Wilders’ eyes and understand where he is coming from; he wants to provide some insight into what the left dismisses as pure demagoguery. Accused of being an apologist for the PVV, Fennema answers back, arguing that Wilders exposes the fragility and intellectual weakness of the postmodernist and multicultural worldview of the Dutch elite. Fennema portrays Wilders as really no more than a republican with a bee in his bonnet about Islam. He thinks liberal leftists are terrified of him because, in the name of multiculturalism, they have repudiated their own sense of national identity. As Fennema put it, they have no answer to Rousseau’s famous criticism of those “supposed cosmopolitans” who “boast of loving everyone so that they might have the right to love no one.”

Fennema says his book should be read more as a political thriller than an academic text. Though he writes as the omniscient narrator and recounts Wilders’ thought processes, conversations and speeches, he was not granted access to him when writing his book. Even so, Fennema insists the book is a history of the often-ignored Dutch Liberal Party, of which Wilders was a member until he left to found his own PVV political party in 2004. The sorcerer of the book title is Fritz Bolkenstein, a prominent Dutch politician and former leader of the VVD for whom Wilders — the apprentice — was a speechwriter.

As an antidote to the hysterical reaction of many liberal-minded Europeans, Fennema’s insights into the origins of the Wilders phenomenon are valuable. In the interview for this article, Fennema argued that that we are seeing today no less than the collapse of post-war social democracy, as it was established in the Netherlands after the second world war. In the corporatist bargain between business and labour, the old business elite maintained control of the economy but, in exchange, gave up control of the cultural establishment (schools, universities etc). This deal was in keeping with the social democratic hope that society could be changed through culture, and through education in particular.

In the aftermath of 1968, the New Left overtook the Dutch labour movement. Beginning with the social revolution of the 1960s, and given a political voice through the events of 1968 and movement against the Vietnam war, the New Left espoused a relativistic, cosmopolitan worldview of which multiculturalism is perhaps the most concrete manifestation. Fennema himself left the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) in the 1970s, in reaction to what he saw as the ethereal elitism of the New Left, and joined the Communist Party, a more “down to earth” option available at the time. He left the party in the 1980s, publicly recanting his leftwing past in a manner that endeared him to much of the Dutch political right, including Wilders’ mentor, Bolkenstein.

In Fennema’s analysis, the answer to the Wilders riddle lies in the collapse of the corporatist bargain. The old business establishment no longer holds the reins of a de-industrialised neoliberal economy. Power now lies in services and in finance rather than in old-fashioned manufacturing. Those now in control of the economy, a younger generation of nouveau riche entrepreneurs and financiers, no longer respect the social pact of past decades and chafe at the values so cherished by the 1968 New Left. As in other countries, from France to the United States, the political legacy of the soixante-huitards is under attack.

What is most curious is that these culture wars should dominate political debate at a time when jobs, wages and state welfare are all under threat in the new “age of austerity.” As budget cuts are being pushed through European parliaments, people on the whole accept with fatalism the need for painful belt-tightening. Even in France and Spain, where acceptance is not won and street protests are largest, the move towards fiscal austerity proceeds apace. As political parties coalesce over the need to cut public spending, debate still rages over whether or not to ban the headscarf or the burqa. Just when you would expect the battle to be fought in the economic field, culture wars are raging across Europe.

Is the popular outburst of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment the complement to the new fatalism over the economy? If so, the current Dutch coalition maps perfectly onto this new kind of populist technocracy. Mark Rutte, VVD leader and prime minister in the current coalition, is the embodiment of the technocratic leader. Wilders, his coalition partner, is the populist. Far from being the exception, this curious Dutch coalition deal perhaps reveals a deeper truth about the contemporary state of European politics. Dutch Culture Wars. Middle East Online. Christopher Bickerton is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam. Le Monde diplomatique – distributed by Agence Global

Netherlands will have two Foreign Ministers: Wilders and other

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