A right -wing Senate chooses the Left Mei Li Vos as chairman – and especially BBB has checked it

Mei Li Vos (GroenLinks-PvdA) is the new chairman of the Senate. And that election, Senators say after the secret mood in two rounds, has nothing to do with politics. Really, nothing at all. Vos can chair “technically” well. They already knew that, because she had replaced Jan Anthonie Bruijn (VVD), who became outgoing Minister of Health in recent weeks.

But in the end everything is political in the Senate. Certainly the election of a chairman. There were three candidates for the prestigious position: in addition to May Li Vos, the two group leaders of the two coalition parties, VVD and BBB. The VVD member Tanja Klip-Martin and BBB member Ilona Lagas.

Ilona Lagas seemed like a contender beforehand. BBB won sixteen of the 75 seats in the Senate in 2023, after the sample victory of the Provincial Council elections. There are still thirteen seats left: the group lost three senators in recent months after internal unrest, who are now spread over the room benches (D66, FVD and independent).

But the large majority of the Senate is right. And under the mighty block of PVV, FvD and JA21 (ten seats), few seemed to be in the mood to vote for the VVD. The VVD group in the Senate is a traditional, administrative and conceived.

Fiasco

The first round of the mood immediately ran out on a fiasco for Lagas. She only got fourteen votes. She then immediately withdrew for the next round, which now only went between Klip and Vos. There Vos won 39 votes, more than enough for a majority. This unexpected left -wing victory in the Senate seemed to raid Mei Li Vos himself. She said she is “pleasantly surprised” by the support of the Senate.

Afterwards it slowly became clear what had happened. First of all about Ilona Lagas: BBB is then a large party, the group can count on little sympathy among the other groups in the Senate. There is hardly any guidance, the senators are upset and differ ideologically strongly.

Many right-wing senators did not feel like voting for Tanja Klip-Martin of the VVD

In recent months, for example, a clear left wing has been set, which was very critical of the ever -right course of BBB. Robert Croll, one of them, left for D66, but the group still has a critical block. Determining detail: Prior to the election of a chairman, at least two BBB party members also reported as a candidate. Lagas managed to beat the ambitious party members in an internal mood.

But she doesn’t have much authority in the group (and beyond). Annabel Nanninga (Ja21, ex-FVD) referred in her questions about the unrest at BBB, when she asked if Lagas “does not take too much hay on her fork.” Referring to the disintegration of FvD in the previous period: “Is that useful for a new party? I know from my own experience that this is not always going smoothly.”

Married at first sight

With us it is not too bad, Ilona Lagas said about the unrest in her party. She compared BBB with the reality series Married at first sightwhere people have to get married with an unknown. “The success rate is a lot higher with us than with that series.” That percentage is around 15 percent at MAFs.

When Ilona Lagas had dropped out of the first vote, it did not mean that the fourteen senators who had voted for her automatically went to the VVD. Many right-wing senators had no sense at all to vote for Tanja Klip-Martin and the mood was secret. The VVD group in the Senate has a completely different, more rightly profile than the Lower House Group, for example their support for the Spreading Act. That is why, some right -wing senators reasoned, you could just as well vote for May Li Vos, who at least had already proven himself as chairman.

Mei Li Vos (1970) has been a member of the Senate since 2019 and is also in front of the class at a primary school. She was a member of parliament until 2017. She presented herself in the Senate on Tuesday as a chairman who wants to ensure continuity, and wants to chair completely neutral. She wants the senators to be able to disagree under her chairmanship.

Prickly

But the questions that Senators asked her and the other candidates showed how spiky the relationships are. Gert-Jan Oplaat (BBB) ​​said: “Here too colleagues die out with the keffiyehthe Arafatjaal. The Senate is increasingly becoming an action modium. ” Annabel Nanninga was talking about MPs who worn “politically colored statements, scarves, pins, packages, jackets”.

Mei Li Vos made it clear that she is not about dressing instructions. “You can change the rules of order. But it will be quite a job to maintain that.”

The chairmanship of the Senate is a position with growing weight in The Hague. The chairman is about the agenda, among other things. And in recent years the Senate has been bothering different coalitions. The Senate will soon have to deal with two controversial asylum laws of the outgoing cabinet. There are many worries about these measures, not only with left -wing groups, but also with the VVD and some BBB people.

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