Esther Ouwehand is resigning as party leader of the Party for the Animals, and Member of Parliament Christine Teunissen is taking over from her. The party announced this on Thursday afternoon. Ouwehand, who has led the PvdD since 2019, will remain a Member of Parliament. In De Volkskrant Ouwehand says that she wants to make “room” for a successor. “Otherwise you will remain dependent on that one familiar face and that is not healthy.” She also makes it clear that she is tired.
She turns fifty this week. As a Member of Parliament, Ouwehand had already suffered from burnout complaints several times, in 2015 she was ill for almost a year. At that time she did not tell us what she had at first NRC she later said: “I felt vulnerable, it seemed like a weakness.”
In 2023, Ouwehand became involved in a power struggle with the party board, which wanted to sideline her as party leader in the middle of the election campaign. According to Ouwehand, the board stood in the way of internal democracy and professionalization of the party. The board said it had taken the step against her after “reports and signals” of “violations of integrity”. As a manager, Ouwehand would not have intervened in an action by her employee that, according to the party management, went against the party’s code of conduct. In NRC, sources in and around the party described Ouwehand as perfectionist and demanding, she came into conflict with other MPs from the PvdD.
Ultimately, it was not Ouwehand who resigned, but the board. Ouwehand remained as leader.
Three Members of Parliament
In the elections in November of that year, the Party for the Animals lost three of the six seats. The party hardly recovered after that, the PvdD currently has three members of the House of Representatives. In the Senate the party also had to deal with arguments and a split. The PvdD faction there is now led by two people who are no longer members of the Party for the Animals.
At BBB, the ideological opposite of the PvdD, Caroline van der Plas did the same thing Ouwehand is doing now earlier this year: Van der Plas also stopped as party leader, but remained a Member of Parliament.