“Wow…” Chairman Anja Dijkhuis-Dieleman turns around in disbelief. The vote in Terneuzen on November 11 has just ended, and while her microphone is still open, she sighs: “Are we here again on Thursday?”
The vote on granting a permit for an asylum seeker center has failed: fifteen in favor, fifteen against. For the second time. One councilor is missing: CDA member Rolf Mobach, until then a supporter of the asylum seekers’ center, leaves the room just before the vote. He reads from a note that he is under “heavy pressure” and therefore does not vote.
Two days later the decision is made: a council majority cancels the permit for the asylum seekers’ center, and the councilors from the council support the council decision. Reason for Mayor Erik van Merrienboer (PvdA) to hand in his resignation this Monday. In his statement the mayor raises the question of whether council members were put under pressure to vote against the asylum seekers’ center.
King’s Commissioner Hugo de Jonge has also received signals that council members were under pressure, his spokesperson said. He wants to talk to them about this in a closed meeting, De Jonge wrote to the council members on Monday a letter he shared on social media. It states that he has “urgently requested” Mayor Van Merrienboer not to resign.
‘Facial book’ of council members
In April 2024, the hundreds of residents of the Driewegen and Zeldenrust districts will be told that the municipal council wants to accommodate a maximum of two hundred asylum seekers at an industrial estate nearby. The council agrees to this, despite emotions from neighborhood stakeholders about concerns about safety and depreciation of their homes. The permit will not be voted on until this fall.
They ask: what are you going to vote for? Why are you in favor? In a way that is almost intimidating
In the months in between, council members feel the pressure from local residents increasing. It is “we-know-us” in Terneuzen, says Eric van Nieuwenhuyzen, leader of the local action group against the asylum seekers’ center. He meets council members at a festival, and he has personally had coffee with some of them. “Yes, of course there is pressure. It is not just a decision. They decide whether two hundred asylum seekers will come to my front garden. In the council chamber we asked: who can we hold liable for the things that will happen around the asylum seekers’ center? The mayor or the council?”
Jack Begijn, leader of the CDA, also feels under pressure. “I think the worst thing is how you are confronted about it. Not about how you stand towards asylum seekers, but they ask: what are you going to vote for? Why are you in favor? In a way that is almost intimidating, with a facial expression that makes you think: guys, can we tone it down a bit?”
The action group places a ‘face book’ on social media of council members who voted for the asylum seekers’ center. Begijn reads reactions such as “these are the Judases” and “we will settle the scores during the elections”.
According to campaigner Van Nieuwenhuyzen, this is an overview of proponents and opponents. “If you feel attacked by that, you don’t deserve a place in the city council.”
Under pressure
It’s not just advocates who feel pressure. Jacqueline Klouwers, councilor of the divided faction TOP GemeenteBelangen, lived for thirty years in the neighborhood where the asylum seekers’ center was to be located and has been against it “from the start”. Yet she was given the cold shoulder at a festival last summer after Klouwers refused to support a PVV motion requesting an immediate cessation of investigation into the asylum seekers’ center location. Klouwers wants to wait for that investigation. “People came to me and asked: how can you be in favor of the asylum seekers’ center? I said: I am not in favor of it, but we are not going to talk about that at a festival.” Klouwers feels compelled to provide an extensive explanation press release issue in which she explains her voting behavior.
During the first vote on the permit, in September
The councilor has been struggling with the file for some time, says action leader Van Nieuwenhuyzen. “When I met him at a festival in the summer, he already told me that he could not vote freely. He could not say what was going on, but he feared the consequences.”
Council members must be able to make decisions without extreme pressure
During the second round on November 11, Mobach reads that he is under pressure. Because he does not want his “immediate environment and working environment” to experience “negative consequences” due to his voting behavior, he does not vote.
In the evening it is fifteen against fifteen again. Two days later it is sixteen against thirteen. Marc de Haas of TOP GemeenteBelangen votes against the permit, while he was in favor two days earlier. That first vote went wrong by accident, he tells Omroep Zeeland, due to the many amendments and motions and “he was busy with his work”. In addition, Henk Eerkes (Christian Union), who is in favor of the asylum seekers’ center at that location, but is in Greece for work, is missing.
Councilor Mobach is not answering his phone and texting NRC a short explanation. The asylum policy in The Hague, he writes, offers council members “no guidance or protection.” Mobach only sees “words and promises.” Council members, he writes, “must be able to make decisions without extreme pressure.”
His group leader Begijn is already thinking about March next year, the municipal elections. “Then we go back to handing out flyers in the shopping center. I then think: I actually don’t feel like doing that anymore. You already know what kind of reactions you will get.”
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