88 days after the municipal elections, the coalitions in the twelve municipalities of Drenthe are complete. The local independent parties, the big winner of the elections, supply nineteen of the 48 aldermen and are thus purveyors to the court. The PvdA rises from five to ten aldermen. The social democrats have thus managed to cash in on a modest profit in Drenthe.
Drents PvdA chairman Jacob Bruintjes, who will say goodbye in a week, speaks of a ‘nice negotiation result’. “The PvdA is the only national party that has won something in Drenthe. We have become the second party in the council elections. And the nice thing about local politics is that it sometimes involves small shifts, with major consequences. The PvdA has benefited from this. with double the number of aldermen. I can say goodbye with a good feeling,” says Bruintjes in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata.
Driver’s Party
Hoogeveen, Midden-Drenthe and Assen have yet to officially install the aldermen, which will happen on Thursday. In Assen, they are even writing hard this weekend on the final version of the coalition agreement. That has yet to be presented on Wednesday, as does the distribution of the portfolios. But the 48 alderman posts in Drenthe are fixed. And then the high score of the PvdA is remarkable, which gains five aldermen, while the party only gained two seats. “We gained slightly more than one percent in terms of votes. But the PvdA has traditionally also been a governing party, with people who can also handle the work well,” says PvdA chairman Bruintjes.
As a result, the PvdA has five newcomers on the table in Aa en Hunze, Borger-Odoorn, Hoogeveen, Tynaarlo and De Wolden. These are all municipalities where the Social Democrats also have administrative traces, and after years of being away they are back at the lecture table.
The five PvdA aldermen who already ruled in Emmen (two), Coevorden, Midden-Drenthe and Noordenveld during the previous term of office, can continue with their work.
Two more ‘local’ aldermen
In the previous term of office, the local independent parties accounted for seventeen aldermen, now two more. This increase is partly due to more aldermen in some municipalities. Now there are 48 aldermen, compared to 46 in the previous term of office. The classrooms mainly benefit from the larger lectures.
Emmen went from five to six aldermen. There, Wakker Emmen, by far the largest with fifteen seats, seized the opportunity to double his two alderman posts to four. In Coevorden, Belangen Buitengebied Coevorden (BBC2014) got a second alderman as soon as they were out with PvdA and CDA to scale up to four aldermen because of more tasks.
Common interests in two places out
The local parties are therefore firmly in the saddle in almost all twelve municipalities. After all, they were the largest everywhere and were also in charge of the coalition negotiations, after which they were able to cash in on the election gain in most cases. Such as in Assen with City Party PLOP and Assen Central, both of which will occupy an alderman post in the provincial capital.
But in Borger-Odoorn the negotiations turned out completely different, IC as the largest party ultimately went awry there. The rest did not want to work with them, so IC was excluded. They saw the two alderman posts they occupied during the previous term of office go up in smoke. Liveable Borger-Odoorn, which originated from angry members of Municipal Interests, now supplies one alderman as a local party in the coalition of PvdA, CDA and VVD. The great IC was sentenced to the opposition benches.
Better interpret local sound
Also in Westerveld ‘local’ is less well represented in the college. Because Municipal Interests has lost its alderman post, while last time they were still allowed to play their part. The larger local party DSW (Sustainable Strong Westerveld) keeps its alderman, and this time opts for governing with VVD and CDA.
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