VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz advocates holding the RTL debate on Sunday evening at a secret location, so that PVV leader Geert Wilders can still participate. “If there is another option, I will join.”
Geert Wilders reported yesterday that he is suspending his campaign for the time being, because he too was allegedly a target of the terrorist cell that planned an attack on Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. “The NCTV does not expect a ‘residual threat’, but I have a bad feeling about this and so I am suspending all my campaign activities for the time being.”
Wilders cancels
VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz thinks it is ‘absolutely not in keeping with our democracy’ that Wilders has to miss the debate because of his safety. Yesterday, Wilders was also absent from the debate on NPO Radio 1. “You want to be able to debate with each other in freedom. I honestly hope that we will just do that this weekend,” says the VVD party leader.
She continues Café Kockelmann: “If you don’t feel safe about the setting and what happened, then you certainly shouldn’t do it. But I would like to see if we can shape it in a different way.”
Secret location
Yesilgöz is thinking of a ‘secret location without an audience’. “I would say: let’s see how it can be done. I am prepared to comply with the circumstances that are necessary to simply be able to debate with each other. It is not up to me to determine what Mr Wilders feels safe with. But whatever is necessary: I am there.”
The politician, who also lives with personal surveillance, calls what Wilders has to endure ‘very intense’. “I can sympathize to a certain extent with what he is experiencing, although it is of a different order.”
‘This is an option’
The VVD leader emphasizes that she does not know the precise circumstances of the threat against Wilders. “That’s why I say: this is an option, but if there is another option, I will simply join in,” she says about her proposal to continue the RTL debate in a secret location.
She concludes: “I have no preconditions. As long as a debate can take place in a way that Mr Wilders also feels safe.”
Martyr
For the time being, Wilders is holding back and refusing to participate in the debate via video connection. “I think it is his strategy. He is becoming a bit of a martyr now, because the people feel a bit sorry for him, like: poor Wilders, then he will also receive a death threat,” said Johan Derksen in Today Inside.
Wilders has not yet canceled VI, where he was announced for next Friday. “I think he will come to us, because he can get that message across to us.”