Column | An opinion packaged as fact

Sometimes framing is blatantly showy. The ‘intelligent lockdown’ of March 2020, for example, so called by the promulgator of the lockdown himself, Mark Rutte. The trick reminded me of my father, who referred to himself as “nice, sweet daddy” when I was a kid. Something like this might work with children, I thought, but does Mark Rutte really believe that the population will simply adopt his positive lockdown character?

Still, Rutte had guessed correctly, because soon the intelligent lockdown (without quotes) was written in various media as a fact. He had done the same trick in 2015 with the ‘social loan system’ – here again an opinion packaged as fact, because how social is a loan system that puts students in a debt that will hinder them from getting a mortgage for years to come?

That flashy framing can also turn against government policy is apparent from the life course of the ‘compulsory law’, which, it was announced on Thursday, is again being delayed. State Secretary Eric van der Burg (VVD) wants to ensure that more municipalities receive asylum seekers through a combination of coercion and rewards. The law should have been in place by October 1, but rebellious VVD members, both in the faction and in the country, are resisting the coercive element.

The word ‘compulsory law’ will not have helped Van der Burg in defending his plans. Unfortunately for him, it is just as persistent as the intelligent lockdown and the social loan system: since JA21 party leader Joost Eerdmans used it in a committee debate on July 1, it has been a common term in the media. Van der Burg tried to make it a ‘spread law’ in recent weeks, but it seems to be a runaway race.

Successful framing forces the audience in a certain direction, thus giving a one-sided or even misleading representation. That is also the case here. First of all, ‘coercive law’ suggests something extreme, but all laws are coercive laws. After all, they force citizens or the government to do or refrain from doing something. Nor is it news that the government is forcing local governments to act. Under the VVD government, municipalities have been forced to do the craziest things, such as offering care for the elderly while budget cuts have been made.

Now that asylum seekers are involved, VVD members suddenly attach themselves to the ‘principle’ that coercion is wrong. The image is taken with them: in a striking number of articles the VVD is referred to as ‘the liberals’, probably to further emphasize the contrast between coercion and freedom. But it’s a silly contrast, because liberals may be less into coercion than conservatives, but no liberal wants a world without laws.

That brings me to another point. Yes, there is coercion if municipalities cannot refuse the reception. If the majority of residents are against the arrival of asylum seekers, then forced reception will indeed overrule local democracy. But isn’t that the idea of ​​liberal(!) democracy – that not only democracy counts, but law as well?

Treaties such as the Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights are there to guarantee that democracies do things that we consider important, but of which nobody says: yes, that seems like a nice assignment. The fact that the central government cannot subsequently pass on this coercion to lower levels of government is a flaw in the system. If asylum seekers have nowhere to go, the right to asylum only exists in theory.

The VVD members who oppose the ‘coercive law’ are therefore in fact opposed to the international treaties in which the right to asylum is established. That may be your conviction, but as long as the Netherlands still participates in those treaties, as a politician you cannot say: they do not apply to us. You cannot already transfer less tax if you are fighting for a tax reduction.

I was reminded of Elon Musk, who two weeks ago in the Financial Times said: “I am subject to literally a million laws and regulations and I obey almost 99.99 percent of them. Only if I think the law goes against the interest of the people do I have a problem with it.” This is also how the protesting VVD members seem to reason: they find it logical that the interests of the people, which they themselves refer to as ‘support’, outweigh the law. Deciding on your own that existing laws do not apply to you – isn’t that undemocratic?