The lobbyist of Natuurmonumenten sends an email to ex-PVV member Tamara ten Hove, Member of Parliament of the Markuszower Group. On Wednesday April 1, ten o’clock in the morning. He wants to meet her, it says. He is curious about the new faction and would like to update Ten Hove about Natuurmonumenten’s plans for “nature, nitrogen and defense”. If she likes it, she can also do so on a working visit to the Empese and Tondense Heide, near Zwolle.
Tamara ten Hove worked as a horse caretaker after completing her pre-vocational secondary education in ‘Agriculture and Nature’. She then became a nurse in the army, serving in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Defense is therefore there for a reason. Neither does Zwolle. The lobbyist, Tom Kunzler, knows she’s from there.
The same Wednesday morning, at eight past twelve, Ten Hove sends a message back: she would like to get to know each other, preferably on a working visit. To Kunzler she is ‘Tamara’, he is ‘Tom’.
In the hallway of the Markuszower Group, which calls itself The New Alliance (DNA), there are orange World Cup flags and stickers with ‘Hup Holland’. In January, just after their split from the PVV, the seven MPs were visibly relieved. In the elevator they talked about ‘hall drinks’ with other parties, journalists could drop by for coffee. And already in February, the Jetten cabinet concluded a deal with Gidi Markuszower and the SGP about the AOW.
Ex-PVV member Tamara ten Hove thinks that Natuurmonumenten is a ‘left-wing club’
But in May, Markuszower tells the reporter Left Laser that the Netherlands must stop Palestinian asylum seekers “by force”. Afterwards, the government parties D66, VVD and CDA also support Jesse Klaver’s motion: the cabinet should no longer conclude agreements with parties that call for violence.
At the beginning of June I hear from Ten Hove about the upcoming working visit, which is scheduled for Friday, June 19. She thinks that Natuurmonumenten is a “left-wing club” that she would like to get to know. She’s going to ask if I can come along.
That’s not allowed. Kunzler texts that ‘Tamara’ and her employee are very welcome. But according to him, with a journalist present, people will pay attention to their words. Natuurmonumenten wants an “open conversation”.
And then another email arrives from Kunzler, one week before the working visit. For ‘Mrs Ten Hove’. Natuurmonumenten likes to talk to “those who think differently”. But the organization “draws a line” with “statements that incite violence.” Tamara ten Hove doesn’t really know what is happening to her. “I feel sidelined,” she tells me. She had called Kunzler and he had described ‘dissidents’ as people who don’t care much about nature. That might have touched her the most: “I love nature.”
In Nieuwspoort on Thursday, Tom Kunzler told me that he and other employees of Natuurmonumenten had started preparing the working visit. And that they then had a “stomach ache”: should they still want to have anything to do with the Markuszower Group? The management subsequently decided that the working visit would not take place. Natuurmonumenten does not yet know what this means for their dealings with parties such as FVD and PVV. That’s what they’re going to talk about, says Kunzler. There will be an “assessment framework”.
On the day of the canceled working visit, Ten Hove is at home preparing the debates for this week: about veterans, about expensive veterinarians. And she keeps an eye on her three horses. One has a foal.
