House of Representatives chairman Vera Bergkamp is trying to keep up the spirits at the first meeting of the committee that will soon be responsible for conducting the parliamentary inquiry into corona policy. As a D66 Member of Parliament, Bergkamp himself experienced that such a survey may ‘cost a lot of time and energy’, but that it is also ‘very beautiful and valuable’ work. ‘It creates a bond with colleagues’.
The question is whether the committee that will meet for the first time on Wednesday in the House of Representatives will indeed build a relationship. Bergkamp was part of the inquiry committee that investigated the Fyra between 2013 and 2016. Everyone agreed on the facts: the Italian high-speed train was a bad buy; the only question was how it could have gone so wrong.
The MPs who will sit on Wednesday in the so-called preparation committee for the parliamentary inquiry into corona – it is customary that they will eventually also conduct the actual investigation – have been constantly at each other’s hair in recent years about the facts. For some, corona was a threat to public health that cried out for strong government intervention, for others it was nothing more than ‘the flu’.
two wings
Coincidence or not, the company immediately divides itself into two wings during the presentation in the Troelstrazaal. On the left are Marijke van Beukering (D66), Ulysse Ellian (VVD), Hilde Palland (CDA) and Pieter Omtzigt (ex-CDA), who mainly followed government policy and regular scientific advice. Vicky Maeijer (PVV), Pepijn van Houwelingen (FvD) and Wybren van Haga (Group Van Haga) take place on the right and the last two parties in particular always came up with alternative facts during the pandemic that had to show that corona was little.
Together they choose Khadija Arib (PvdA) as chair of the preparatory committee that will work on the research assignment in the coming six months, although the result is not unanimous. One person votes for VVD member Ellian, member Nicki Pouw (JA21) is absent. “We’re going to make something interesting out of it,” Arib says as she takes over the gavel.
It certainly promises to be interesting. For example, FvD member Van Houwelingen will now have to make agreements with parties that he previously labeled as part of ‘a totalitarian regime’ about what exactly the inquiry committee should investigate and who will be questioned under oath. More than six months ago, the FvD, who compared the quarantine policy to the exclusion of Jews in the 1930s, still threatened that tribunals would be set up for his opponents.
Flu and fake news
Van Houwelingen adheres to the agreement on Wednesday that only chairman Arib may speak on behalf of the preparatory committee and refuses to explain his role. Wybren van Haga, in turn, spoke extensively to the media. The ex-FvD member has always claimed that corona was the flu and that just about all measures were superfluous. Ex-VWS minister Hugo de Jonge called Van Haga ‘a danger to public health’ because he ‘spreads fake news in the middle of a pandemic’.
According to Van Haga, he can nevertheless conduct excellent objective research into corona policy. “Everyone has to be open to the facts. I have always started from the data, but the research may also show that I missed things.’
‘Work harder’
The preparatory committee includes a relatively large number of MPs from smaller political groups. The coming months will show whether they can afford the hard work, which Chamber President Bergkamp warns. Two other parliamentary inquiries are already underway (on gas extraction in Groningen and on the allowance affair) and several parties have declined the investigation into the corona pandemic, because they are succumbing to work pressure. Left-wing parties in particular are now underrepresented. ‘They should work harder’, says Van Haga.
In any case, it will not be the fault of chairman Arib (‘I am really looking forward to it’). ‘What’s the point of the composition of this committee?’, she says, quasi-surprised when journalists keep asking about the motley crew she will be leading. ‘One is a bit more critical, the other a bit calmer. If that complements each other, we will soon come up with a good report.’