He was determined to storm the Roosendaal city council with 50PLUS, but the adventure of party leader Gerrit Vruwink ends in a soft spot. Because the planned number 2, 3 and 4 with corona are in the hospital, he will not have the signatures before the deadline. “So sour. You are not making this up.”
Everything was already in pitchers, says Vruwink. “The official papers were ready to be submitted. Only the signatures of the candidates were still missing.” Precisely that is now thwarting the political ambitions of the 50PLUS faction, which would take part in the Roosendaal elections for the first time. “First I heard that the number 2 of the list has ended up on the IC. That’s not going well. Very sad, of course.”
But it didn’t stop there. “A little later, the news of the next two candidates on the electoral list came. They know each other well and probably infected each other.” And that has quite a few consequences. “Only family is allowed to visit. So I tried to get those forms signed through them. But in the end it came to nothing.”
The conclusion? “I took the plunge last Friday. From the provincial government they would have preferred that I had moved the numbers 5, 6 and 7 up. Those are very nice people, but to enter the elections with this… Then you just have to conclude that it won’t be. No matter how angry the board gets about that.”
The road to the elections was not smooth for the brand new faction. Earlier there was already a fuss about the party leader position, after which two candidates split off again. “All in all, it’s certainly not what I had hoped for,” says Vruwink. “First and foremost: those people are not in the hospital for fun. That’s bad enough. But it is very sour.”