For years I have been excited about the song ‘Ironic’ by Alanis Morissette. She pretends to describe ironic situations, but fails in at least half of the cases. Rain on your wedding day, a fly in your chardonnay, a traffic jam if you’re late: all annoying things, but ironic? The closest thing to irony is the example of ‘ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife’, and you rarely experience that.
If Morissette ever wanted to rewrite the song, she could watch the parliamentary debate about the election results. The fact that the future opposition seemed to understand better than Pieter Omtzigt how to protect the democratic constitutional state, while Omtzigt had made that constitutional state a spearhead, seemed to me to be an excellent example of irony.
This became clear, for example, around Henri Bontenbal’s plea for a ‘democratic ethos’. According to the new CDA leader, a democratic constitutional state is about more than respecting the Constitution and fundamental rights: the language and behavior of politicians are also important, for example when they talk about democratic institutions. “The erosion of the rule of law starts with words,” said Bontenbal. He received support from Frans Timmermans (GroenLinks-PvdA) and Marieke Koekkoek (Volt), who asked Geert Wilders to distance himself from statements such as “head rag tax”, “D66 judges” and “scum from the ledge” (about journalists). Wilders wanted nothing to do with it: “I don’t distance myself from anything and I don’t apologize for anything.” He had made those statements in his “role as opposition leader”. In his new role, as leader of the largest party, he wanted to “make a different opinion heard.”
Wilders could stage his role play without interruption by his intended new coalition partners. Omtzigt, the man who wrote in his election manifesto that he stood for “respectful interaction with residents, fellow parliamentarians, ministers and civil servants”, also remained seated.
Another step against the rule of law was the motion in which VVD faction leader Dilan Yesilgöz called on the Senate not to consider for the time being the law that her own ministry – sorry, that of minister Yesilgöz – had submitted and which had already been adopted by the House of Representatives. Even the SGP, opponent of the Spread Act, had to admit that it could not vote for this motion “due to the rule of law”.
This action also showed little respect for international law. After all, the idea of the Refugee Convention is that it can force democracies to accept refugees. The only thing the Distribution Act does is ensure that this coercion, which exists as long as the Netherlands respects international law, is fairly distributed across the country. Municipalities that refuse to receive refugees are actually human rights refusers. I don’t see what principled argument you can use to defend that. The only argument is strategic: if Ter Apel defects, there will be more momentum for inflow restriction.
Yesilgöz’s motion is not only, as Minister Hugo de Jonge put it on Friday, “constitutionally unwise”, but also a typical example of the old administrative culture. Once again it is surprising that Omtzigt had no problems with this; his name was even among the motion. And yet in his election manifesto he still advocated a “different political culture” and therefore respectful interaction with fellow parliamentarians.
This seems to me to be sufficient input in terms of irony, but if I were Morissette I would also look at Yesilgöz’s HJ Schoo lecture last year on the democratic constitutional state. This would be threatened by extremists who “question all institutions that form and defend our constitutional state”, such as “politicians who denigrate journalists” and “depict judges as biased”. She encouraged democratically minded citizens to speak out against this: “Get involved.”
But that was Yesilgöz as speaker of the HJ Schoo lecture, a number of roles ago. We should not expect VVD leader Yesilgöz to interfere with anti-rule of law statements from her intended coalition partner. And neither does Van Omtzigt. For him, the Constitution is a “rock-hard lower limit”, and he has “heard from Wilders that he adheres to the Constitution”. He said nothing about the damage that Wilders causes to the rule of law with his words.
I guess I don’t need to spell it out any further for Alanis Morissette.
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