Former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA) regrets his harsh attack on Prince Friso and his fiancée Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003. He then said at a press conference that the couple had not fully informed him about the relationship that Wisse Smit had previously had with drug criminal Klaas Bruinsma. “When untruths are spoken, there is of course no remedy,” said a visibly angry Balkenende. Now, in retrospect, he believes that “this sentence should not have been said” and that it “would not have been necessary either.”
For Balkenende, extra incriminating information about the status of the relationship between Wisse Smit and Bruinsma was the reason not to submit a marriage consent law to parliament. He talked about “damaging trust.” As a result, Friso, the second son of Queen Beatrix, disappeared from the list of heirs to the throne. The marriage did go ahead as usual. Prince Friso died in 2013 as a result of a skiing accident the year before.
Former Prime Minister Balkenende revisits his statements at the time in the two-part TV documentary Balkenende’s storm from NTR that will be broadcast on December 27 and 28 as part of the series of prime minister portraits. Balkenende’s unprecedentedly fierce words were later often seen as an explanation for the cool relationship between Queen Beatrix and her Prime Minister. In the documentary, the then highest official of the Ministry of General Affairs, Wim Kuijken, also admits this in secret. “That statement is also heard at the palace and that is not nice,” he says. Unlike many of his predecessors, Balkenende was not appointed Minister of State after his eight-year premiership. This only happened in 2022 on the recommendation of King Willem-Alexander.
Turbulent premiership
In the TV portrait by makers Misha Wessel and Thomas Blom, Balkenende looks back in detail on his turbulent premiership, which was characterized by three cabinet crises. Balkenende disappeared from the political scene in 2010 after the CDA lost twenty seats in the elections under his leadership. Key players from that time, such as PvdA leader Wouter Bos, CDA faction leader Maxime Verhagen, D66 leader Thom de Graaf and VVD minister Rita Verdonk, also speak. Precisely because so many years have passed, the interviewees dare to speak out much more openly than at the time. For example, Maxime Verhagen freely admits that he never saw anything in collaboration with Wouter Bos’s PvdA in 2003 and that the formation negotiations between CDA and PvdA were only an illusion.
The new view on the Ayaan Hirsi Ali issue that led to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006 is also interesting. Minister Rita Verdonk of Immigration had stripped the VVD Member of Parliament of her Dutch citizenship because, as a political refugee, she had provided incorrect information in her asylum application. The documentary shows that people from the VVD leadership, such as then party chairman Gerrit Zalm and party chairman Bas Eenhoorn, knew about this much earlier. But for Rita Verdonk this was completely new. And Balkenende also appears surprised when confronted with this by the interviewers. “That’s playing with dynamite,” he says.
Support for invasion of Iraq
An important part of Balkenende’s premiership was his unconditional support for the United States for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which subsequently set the region on fire. The argument for the British-backed American military action was the weapons of mass destruction that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allegedly possessed. Later it became clear and admitted that these weapons were not there.
However, Balkenende remained convinced that there had been a justified action. He stubbornly resisted further investigation. When the pressure became too great, he finally agreed to a state commission led by former president Willibrord Davids of the Supreme Court. It concluded that there was no adequate international law mandate for the American attack. In the portrait, Balkenende maintains his position that the Americans acted well. “I also feel responsible for the fact that a dictator with a lot on his conscience had to be stopped.”
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