BBB holds a ‘talk show’ on Saturday afternoon instead of an election congress, in a studio in Zeewolde. And certain is: if you organize that yourself, very little can go wrong. At the table are Caroline van der Plas, BBB’ers from the outgoing and also halved cabinet, BBB MPs. In the stands: candidate MPs, campaign leaders from all over the Netherlands. The talk show host is also from BBB and she asks questions such as: “So BBB does not only deliver, you say, but is not ready yet?” Or: “Do you also feel the pride that Caroline radiated in this week’s debate?” And: “You are fighting through, right Henk?”
It takes an hour and fifteen minutes. In the broadcast, via YouTube, there is also the result of an online members’ council on the election program and the list of candidates. But the fact that one BBB member, publicist Jan Dijkgraaf, has managed to get a change on that list via an amendment remains unmentioned: due to an amendment of him, with fifty signatures and the online support of about 1,200 members, MP Claudia Van Zanten, who was in 7th, went up to place 5, where MP Marieke Wijieke. It is now at 7.
“I only see happy faces,” says the talk show host when determining the list, which does not come into the picture. There is also no close-up from Marieke Wijen-Nass, but in the room you can see how she looks: tight. She only claps a little bit. She thinks it’s “a pity, yes,” she says later that afternoon. “I would rather have stayed in place 5. But the members decide.”
It is about a animal activist at the table for a long time who threatens to set the BBB party office on Saturday morning in De Telegraaf. “Pick up that guy,” says Van der Plas. She calls him “an animal terrorist.” BBB called the police, Van der Plas expects the man to be in prison tonight.
Mona Keijzer explains at the table why she does not want to carry out a PVV amendment in a law on social rent. Because of that amendment, ‘foreigners’, status holders or other groups that are non-Dutchman could no longer be eligible for urgency when assigning a rental home. Even if they end up in circumstances that would normally give you that right. That amendment discriminates, says Keijzer, in the ‘show’, and MP Henk Vermeer mentions Article 1 of the Constitution.
It is not about the ‘show’ that BBB in the Lower House itself had voted before the amendment of the PVV. Afterwards, Van der Plas says that it had “not gone well.” “It was a hectic, chaotic mood. But we shouldn’t have done that. Mona had said that: don’t do it.”
Van der Plas believes that there was not one critical question at the BBB table. “I am not afraid of criticism at all, but this would be a festive day. The beginning of our campaign.” Party chairman Erik Stegink says that BBB members could have submitted questions in advance. They were allowed to go about everything. And they were used at the table.
There were no questions.