If Richard de Mos is sentenced to prison for corruption, what about Rita Verdonk? Although she served as a prison warden for a while before her political career, she will not be using that experience to prepare her current political leader for his stay behind bars.
For the youngest readers of this column: Rita Verdonk became Minister for Immigration and Integration for the VVD in 2003 and saw herself as the first female Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Supported by Frits Bolkestein, she competed with Mark Rutte for the leadership of the party in 2006, which she narrowly lost. She later claimed the party leadership, after which she was kicked out of the VVD – the most decisive maneuver of Rutte’s career.
Verdonk briefly climbed to great political heights when she won sixty seats in the municipal elections with her party Proud of the Netherlands in 2010, but in the parliamentary elections of that year she turned out to have lost all her political credit due to all kinds of internal conflicts: zero seats. She left politics, but suddenly returned in 2022 as a Hague city councilor for Groep de Mos/Hart for The Hague.
It was a remarkable switch from Verdonk, because De Mos was already suspected of official corruption by the Public Prosecution Service. The National Investigation Department had conducted a search of his offices in 2019, he had temporarily stepped down as alderman.
An unintentionally funny video can be found on the internet in which a PowNed reporter has a conversation with ‘the dream couple’ De Mos – Verdonk.
“What makes Richard more fun than Rutte?” is the first question. Verdonk: “Richard is a strong man, and I have experienced that before in my career: strong men can handle strong women, they give them space and I need that.” Looking at De Mos: “That heart is in the right place, the energy that Richard radiates and that love for the city, I find it very nice to see, I like to join that.”
The reporter of PowNed (the public broadcaster that already stood up for Ongehoord Nederland when the broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland did not yet exist), calls De Mos a “very honest man”, but still feels obliged to address the accusations of corruption. Then Verdonk says something interesting: “We’ll see. We have agreements about that. I went to Hart voor Den Haag because of Richard, but also because of the content of the program, then we will ensure that we continue this very good work for the city with a team of good people.”
Richard nods silently, he knows what these words mean. Verdonk will succeed him if he ends up in jail. He may be allowed to come back when he has served his sentence, but then as a strong man behind this strong woman.
The right-wing populists – from Janmaat and Fortuyn to Wilders and Baudet – have never brought any good to the Netherlands, but perhaps everything will change for The Hague if Rita Verdonk starts leading the largest municipal group there. Just like those other populists, her heart is always in the right place: where power beckons and favors are shared.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 3, 2023