Dick Schoof is a top civil servant again, Friday morning in the interrogation room of the parliamentary corona inquiry committee. In March 2020, the start of the corona crisis, he had just become Secretary General at the Ministry of Justice. And that’s what the questions are about. But does Schoof himself still like to think back on that old, subordinate role? That morning he starts talking about himself as Prime Minister three times, in subordinate sentences and sometimes somewhat vaguely. “Now I have to be careful,” he says after an hour and fifteen minutes. “Because I’m sitting here as a SG…, as a former Secretary General…” He straightens his back and smiles a little. “But the prime minister is not the solution for everything.”
During the time of the corona crisis, Mark Rutte was Prime Minister. Schoof calls him “the MP”, as civil servants do among themselves. Rutte, who is being interrogated on Friday afternoon, in turn talks about “Dick”. He had told the inquiry committee in the morning that he did not like the ‘Torentjesconsultation’ on the crisis: three times a week with a few ministers and Rutte’s closest advisors. And Rutte says he understands him: “If you are not allowed to be there yourself, you think: what is happening there? What are they trying to negotiate? That is inevitable.”
As prime minister, Schoof was not allowed to attend a crisis meeting about his own cabinet last spring. Now Rutte portrays him as the civil servant who also had to wait outside during the corona period.
In the House of Representatives, Rutte no longer knew what it was about: a speech about herd immunity?
In March 2020, Rutte himself thought that he could address the Netherlands from the Torentje, live on TV. That would be the kind of historical event that Rutte loves so much: a first. No prime minister had done that since Joop den Uyl during the oil crisis of 1973. The speech, on Monday, March 16 at seven o’clock in the evening, was a huge success that entire evening. According to De Telegraaf, Rutte had shown “calm and leadership”, NRC heard “urgency, authority, realism but also compassion”, De Volkskrant wrote that “Father State in person” had spoken. Only the next day, mainly due to the harsh criticism from the World Health Organization WHO, did it become clear what Rutte had said about ‘herd immunity’, which he said could be achieved by “spreading out” the number of infections. He called that “the scenario of our choice.” But according to the WHO, it was far from certain that this would succeed, and perhaps only after years.
In the House of Representatives, two days later, Rutte called the speech a “TV talk”. And almost three months later he said in a debate against Lodewijk Asscher of the PvdA: “I don’t know anything about a speech about herd immunity. I haven’t heard that.”
In the interrogation room on Friday afternoon, Rutte clearly thinks it is time for his very first TV speech, with 7.6 million viewers, to be reinstated. Over and over again he talks about “the Torentjespeech”. But the inquiry committee only wants to know what he meant by herd immunity. Rutte says that that was “not a policy goal”, the committee does not ask further questions.
Schoof has returned from his holiday in France for the interrogation. He does not want to talk to journalists afterwards. Rutte does. In front of the cameras he starts talking about the Torentjes speech again. And again there is no response. But Rutte, NATO Secretary General for almost two years, is doing as he always does: cheerfully. He came on his bicycle, he is leaving on his bicycle. All he has with him is a gray scarf. “It will be cold soon. Always be prepared.”