Mona Keijzer had “already threatened to resign dozens of times.” Henk Vermeer, just elected as BBB faction leader in the House of Representatives, says it to one TV camera after another. “And so,” he says, “her departure didn’t surprise us at all.”
In the hall of the House of Representatives on Tuesday morning, Vermeer will explain why former minister and former deputy Prime Minister Mona Keijzer was not allowed to take over the leadership of the party, even though it had been promised to her at the end of October last year by Caroline van der Plas and Vermeer themselves, in a conversation with the three of them.
Vermeer now says that after that “confidence in her collapsed.” According to him, this is “due to a sum of things”, of which he only wants to confirm what NRC had previously reported. Against the wishes of Van der Plas and the others, Keijzer had had a conversation with ex-PVV member Gidi Markuszower, a few days after he had split off and started his own ‘group’ with six other ex-PVV members.
Vermeer says in the hall that the other BBB members in the group were not against such a conversation. “We just wanted to discuss the framework for that conversation in advance.” But according to him, Keijzer had not wanted that, she had gone for coffee with Markuszower and, says Vermeer, had not told them afterwards what had been discussed. What contributed to the concerns about that contact: BBB had four seats, Groep Markuszower seven. In the event of a possible merger of the two, BBB could be “outflanked”, according to Vermeer.
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‘Emotion of the moment’
Vermeer also says a few times that he understands that Keijzer was “disappointed” because she did not become Van der Plas’s successor. But he also says that after that promise at the end of October, she had already started behaving as a faction leader, and that that was not the intention. In doing so he seems to be making an allusion to the other ‘things’ in the ‘sum’, but he refuses to continue with that. So that remains up in the air: “Then that’s the way it is. I don’t want to get into a discussion about what did or didn’t happen.” In any case, he says, it had nothing to do with BBB’s positions. “We are a broad social-conservative party and we participated on all dossiers.”
In a message on Keijzer says on X that agreements had been made at BBB about “professionalization”, but that in practice “the emotion of the moment was often leading”.
Vermeer responds measuredly. “I think these are qualifications that are completely outside the content.”
Vermeer calls himself ‘not yet a voice cannon’, as he believes Keijzer was. He thinks he can become one
Vermeer calls the fact that the conflict has just come to light during the campaign for the municipal elections on March 18 as “extremely annoying timing.” “We hope that we can reassure our people quickly. We will get back on track.” On Monday evening, March 2, BBB had planned a campaign evening in Amsterdam with the theme ‘Amsterdam back in order’, with Caroline van der Plas and Mona Keijzer. That won’t happen, says Vermeer. “Or at least: they are probably not there at the same time.”
It is not yet clear how Keijzer’s departure from BBB will affect the Senate, where the party has already lost four of the sixteen MPs since the provincial elections in 2023.
Can BBB fall apart? “I hope not,” says Henk Vermeer.
He calls himself “not yet a voting cannon, no”, as he believes Keijzer was. Vermeer thinks he can become one, now that he is party leader of BBB. “Only then will you get attention. Like here now, with all those microphones and cameras of yours.”
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