He was the successor of the PvdA members Jos van Kemenade, admired for his great knowledge of education, and the well-spoken Ger Klein, who had served as State Secretary for Higher Education in the Den Uyl cabinet. Pais had to profile himself against his popular predecessors with their outspoken views. That was right up his alley, defiant and determined as he was.
The PvdA members sat in the Chamber benches, gritting their teeth. Afterwards, they were sometimes able to get their money’s worth. When Pais triumphantly asked Klein after a debate what he thought of his performance, he said that he had never seen a vegetarian so happy with a dead sparrow.
On the first acquaintance with the official top, the not yet sworn Pais rolled out a piece of wallpaper with a rough sketch of the ministry on the back. He had gone on a rampage with a red felt-tip pen. It was clear: he couldn’t get along with those left-wing rascals that had been brought in by Van Kemenade.
Aäron Pais (The Hague, 1930) was a son of the director of the Amsterdam post office. During the Second World War he was arrested four times and went into hiding at seventeen addresses. He was married to Eegje Schoo who, more than a year after Pais disappeared from The Hague, became Minister for Development Cooperation in the first Lubbers cabinet.
Restructuring university education
As minister, Pais immediately threw himself into the restructuring of university education, which had to make short work of the eternal student. The shortening of the doctoral study to four years had degenerated into chaos. The law had given universities the option of making a five-year curriculum if they could demonstrate the need to do so. Academics in the Netherlands had seized this opportunity with both hands. Reports full of reports were unloaded on the doorstep of the Ministry.
Pais formed a commando unit that had to split the academic education in two. The first phase involved a doctoral study with a course duration of a maximum of four years. In the second phase, a limited number of graduates could become proficient in research and specializations.
The elite unit kept to a strict schedule of all the steps to be taken in the time-consuming legislative process with iron discipline. In the fourth year of Pais’ reign, the House of Representatives passed the Two-Phase Structure Act. A daring feat. This ended a twenty-year struggle that had worn out seven ministers.
‘They shouldn’t cry’
Pais had no child at the Chamber. He could talk for hours with a few scribbles and without being whispered by his officials. The harder the opposition hacked at him, the more vicious he became. “They shouldn’t whine if I pay back in the same coin,” he said. The Chamber feared the sharp-tongued street fighter who could switch swords in the blink of an eye.
He didn’t allow himself to be provoked by anything and anyone, he was always late, even in the Chamber. In the department, the antechamber of the ministers’ room often bulged. Not infrequently the minister was in the attic playing table tennis with his driver. Agile as he was, he always knew how to apologize.
His officials also did not respect Pais, he publicly rejected them. “It says here to be against it, but I think it’s a good idea,” he would say. Then he turned to his dismayed officials to tell them what was wrong with their advice.
Late in the evening he could call the secretary-general’s right-hand man with instructions that a report should be ready on his desk by eight thirty the next morning. He himself arrived a few hours later in a relaxed mood.
The teetotaler Pais drank mostly water, reason for the coffee lady to call the minister a guppy out of earshot. Pais wasn’t allowed to drink a drop of alcohol, but he could mix such a vicious cocktail that it would knock a seasoned pub tiger backwards.
Pais made up his mind, he didn’t care how it happened as long as he had his way. On one occasion, the night before Budget Day, he lay sideways in the Council of Ministers until three o’clock in the morning, refusing to sign for the cutbacks that his colleague from Finance demanded of him. At the last minute, the figures in the budget have been filled in in ink.
ramble on
His insistence has resulted in much legislation. Pais not only redesigned science education, he merged pre-primary and primary education and introduced tuition fees for higher vocational education. The law that was to regulate employee participation in primary and secondary education was passed to the Senate when he resigned.
The curbing of university education was the tour de force that had given Pais the greatest pleasure. He had tackled not only the eternal student, but – in his words – also ‘professors who spent their thinking period mainly on the Riviera and scientific assistants who did everything but cooperate scientifically’.