I saw images of Prime Minister Dick Schoof taking a tour with Mayor Van Zanen and a group of firefighters around the Heras Fencing with which the crater in The Hague was cordoned off. More than 24 hours after the explosion, it was still unclear what exactly had happened in that apartment complex on Tarwekamp, and whether there would still be people under the rubble. The point of his presence was to be present and he did that properly. Of course there was criticism that he should have arrived on Saturday, the day of the disaster, but once the fire has been extinguished it doesn’t really matter when you come to look at smoldering rubble.
Dick Schoof is increasingly turning into a polder version of Forrest Gump. It must be a strange fault line in his life: from one moment to the next he is by default present at the aftermath of major events. He is then as surprised as everyone else, but his reaction is filmed. With his head half hidden in the coat, he discovered on Sunday that a disaster had happened.
He didn’t ask any (stupid) questions, he just observed and is getting better at making observations afterwards, in fact he has become a reporter. He sees what everyone else sees and likes to leave the views to the specialists in his cabinet.
In Syria, the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad finally fell at about the same time. I imagined Dick Schoof, barely home, and already digging through the bag of words that he now has on his belt as standard. Yes, what did he think of almost fifteen years of war?
“Sad?”
“Hopeful?”
“Disgraceful?”
And then peering into the evening on the smartphone, checking to see if they have already figured out what they find in his cabinet. The key question will again be whether the Syrians can return here more quickly. We sympathize, but we would rather bring everyone back to wish them a happy democracy from a distance. Dick Schoof can do that. And at the end of next week they will take him to a Blokker branch to find that those stores are really closing permanently.
Marcel van Roosmalen writes a column on Mondays and Thursdays.