The abuse at 50PLUS has left Asser faction leader Clemens Otto embarrassed. The party congress of the elderly party got completely out of hand last weekend. One of the candidate party leaders was removed from the room under police escort, the current chairman indicated that he was leaving, after which the meeting was ultimately adjourned. And it remains to be seen whether 50PLUS Assen will continue to exist.
Otto’s phone has been ringing off the hook for the past few days. “I only get texts and emails from: ‘What a mess there’ and ‘I don’t know if I’m going to vote for you yet.’ I think that’s terrible.”
Otto saw with ‘a knot in his stomach’ how things got out of hand at the party conference in Ede last weekend. “We are there for the elderly from Assen and Emmen and then you have those job hunters who you don’t hear all season and when there is something to be had they suddenly come into the picture. It’s like a pot of honey that everyone suddenly comes to.”
According to Otto, it would be a conflict with Gerard van Hooft, a previously expelled party member (but successfully challenged his expulsion), who wants to become party leader. The 50PLUS board had nominated Ellen Verkoelen as party leader, but Van Hooft also wants to become one.
According to Otto, the contribution reduction that Van Hooft implemented as temporary chairman ‘made a whole group of people members’, who could choose him as party leader. “He mobilized a very large following.” This should not be possible, Otto believes, just like the board that decided that anyone who became a member after July 7 does not have the right to vote.