“Is membership of the Labor Party a prerequisite for becoming an informant for the PVV?”, party leader Rob Jetten of D66 immediately wondered.
With the nomination of SER chairman Kim Putters as a new informant, PVV leader Geert Wilders took another surprising step in the formation process on Wednesday. And, after Ronald Plasterk, he indeed once again opts for a prominent PvdA member.
After the first failed information round led by Plasterk – the four negotiating parties PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB have been unable to offer any prospects for a successful cabinet formation after two months – it is the turn of the 50-year-old Putters. He spent ten years in municipal politics for the PvdA (councilor and faction leader in Hardinxveld-Giessendam) and ten years in the Senate (2003-2013).
If Wilders has his way, Putters will initially talk to all party leaders about the form of a future cabinet: a minority cabinet, with or without a permanent tolerating partner, a business cabinet or an extra-parliamentary cabinet. “Everything is negotiable for the PVV,” Wilders said at the end of his contribution to the parliamentary debate on Wednesday morning. He expects that this “intermediate phase” will not have to last longer than three or four weeks.
Less controversial than Plasterk
With the choice of Putters, Wilders provokes slightly less resistance from other parties than with the choice of the first informant (and scout). Although Plasterk is still a PvdA member, he has been silent in his columns in recent years The Telegraph likes to hear a loud and critical voice about his own party and the now outgoing Rutte IV cabinet.
Putters is considerably less controversial among all political parties. As chairman of the Social Economic Council (SER) for the past year and a half, and before that as director of the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP), he is a widely respected government advisor. By means of de Volkskrant he was twice named ‘most influential Dutch person’, in 2019 and in 2020.
As SCP director, he dealt, solicited and unsolicited, with the major social issue of our time: the increasing distrust of citizens in politics and government, and the increasingly harsh tone in the social debate. He saw the role and significance of the SCP in this: making the voice of the angry or upset citizen heard.
Putters criticized the harsh austerity policy of Rutte II, in which his own PvdA was a coalition partner. For example, he criticized the consequences of the decentralization of government tasks, cuts in youth care and the closure of sheltered workshops. These are issues that are still on the table when forming a new cabinet, and Putters knows this better than anyone.
“We put our finger on sore spots quite early,” Putters said in one NRCinterview upon his departure as SCP director at the end of 2021. “These are structural problems that take time to solve. The urgency to solve this will then be very limited for a long time.”
During the cabinet formation in 2017, from which Rutte III emerged, Putters regularly visited to share his analysis of the growing gaps in society. Many other parties that were not at the table during the formation also asked him to inform them about the dissatisfaction of the ‘angry citizen’.
Also read
This profile from 2021: Kim Putters is not always listened to
Listen
In his current role as chairman of the SER – the consultative body between employers, employees and the government – he is less outspoken to the outside world on politically sensitive files, but he does show a characteristic that is important for an information process with parties that do not naturally meet each other. lying well can be particularly useful: listening, identifying different points of view and bringing them together where possible. Within the SER he has a reputation for doing this in a humane, amiable manner.
With his choice of Putters as the new informant, Geert Wilders will also want to show that he wants to accommodate Pieter Omtzigt. Although he resented the NSC party leader in no uncertain terms last week for unexpectedly and for incomprehensible reasons leaving the formation table, the PVV leader would like him back at the negotiating table. Kim Putters, Wilders suspects, will also suit Omtzigt well. Putters suggested the idea back in 2016 of a ‘new social contract’ to counter the growing polarization in society.
In addition, even before the elections of November 22, Kim Putters’ name was mentioned as a possible informant. According to sources at NSC, it was Pieter Omtzigt’s party that made this suggestion.