with videoParty leader Pieter Omtzigt is upset about the issue surrounding the departed chairman Hein Pieper. The suggestion that every mistake from the distant past is now politically fatal for fellow party members bothers Omtzigt: “I have also made mistakes, of course, so this affects me.”
Niels Klaassen
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17:33
Omtzigt responded for the first time to the issue surrounding the party chairman in the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon. They have been friends for years. Pieper has been involved in the New Social Contract (NSC) since the very beginning.
Omtzigt ‘misses’ Pieper as chairman. But he emphasizes that Pieper himself decided to quit, because he does not want NSC to be burdened with the old affair. “Mr Pieper has decided it, but it affects me how we deal with this,” Omtzigt reported in the hallway of the House of Representatives.
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When asked whether NSC is not setting the bar too high and whether Omtzigt himself has never done anything wrong in recent years, he replied: “Of course I have made mistakes in my life over the past nineteen years, so in that respect it affects me. ”
This weekend, Pieper resigned after a complaint about a labor dispute from almost twenty years ago. The party board had the investigation into the report carried out by an independent third party, integrity professor Rob van Eijbergen. Pieper had surfed porn, and when he was confronted about it, he allegedly abused his power as an employer and sidetracked the employee. That conflict had long been resolved and is not in itself the reason why Pieper is now stepping down as chairman.
The fact that Pieper was not honest about this with the other board members of New Social Contract bothers him, sources told this news site on Monday. “It’s not about the porn or the conflict at the time, it’s about the fact that he did not inform the rest of the board about it,” says an insider.
Pieper also remains a member and involved in NSC, but no longer as chairman.
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