The scout’s job is humbling. Also that of Ronald Plasterk, appointed on Tuesday by Speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp. The scout, who has been deployed since the formation of 2012, must supervise the first phase of the cabinet formation and gauge which parties could possibly form a coalition with each other. The only question is: can Ronald Plasterk do that?
In order to perform the task as best as possible, a scout must not cause any problems. Political leaders must keep the scout “out of the wind” for as long as possible, wrote a committee led by Professor Carla van Baalen in an evaluation of the long formation of 2021. The formation, which ultimately led to the fourth Rutte cabinet, went according to those involved “unprofessional, messy, difficult, chaotic and terrible.” Never again, everyone in The Hague thought.
Following this report, the House adopted a motion asking for future scouts to be appointed who have a “distance from daily politics”. That is precisely what went wrong in the 2021 formation, with the scouts Kajsa Ollongren (D66) and Annemarie Jorritsma (VVD). The ‘function elsewhere’ issue was proof for many involved that they were already participating in the negotiations.
A no drama-scout
Distance from politics and a no dramaattitude were, in short, the lessons of 2021. But are those lessons also taken to heart in The Hague? There is little evidence of this in the first week of the exploration phase. The first scout, PVV senator Gom van Strien, resigned before he had had his first interview. This happened after NRC wrote that earlier this year Utrecht University had filed a complaint against Van Strien, his successor and a third employee of the company Utrecht Holdings for bribery and fraud.
The second scout, Ronald Plasterk, just like Van Strien, has no distance from politics. He was a minister and a member of the House of Representatives twice on behalf of the PvdA, between 2007 and 2017. He now mainly exerts influence as a columnist for The Telegraph, in which he tackles progressive Netherlands every week. Wilders had asked him, Plasterk said himself on Tuesday, because he thought “he wouldn’t fool him.”
Plasterk was accepted as a scout by most of the elected party leaders on Tuesday. Only Esther Ouwehand (Party for the Animals) and Stephan van Baarle (Denk) were against. In his case, that is for reasons of principle, not because of Plasterk, says Van Baarle. “You should not give the initiative to a party that wants to undermine the rule of law and discriminate against more than a million Dutch Muslims.” Van Baarle refuses to talk to Plasterk.
Cards on the table
Plasterk’s long-term political involvement was hardly mentioned as a problem by almost anyone. Geert Wilders, who nominated Plasterk as winner of the elections, said that the former minister “knows how things go in The Hague” and is therefore very suitable for his role. Plasterk himself promised not to confuse the role of scout with that of negotiator, as had happened last time.
Wilders has already laid his cards on the table. Ultimately, he wants a right-wing majority coalition and for this he needs the support of VVD and NSC, possibly also from BBB. The latter party would like to. Pieter Omtzigt of NSC is still keeping a low profile. In de Volkskrant he said this weekend that “a number of central proposals in the PVV’s election manifesto are contrary to the Constitution,” and that defending the rule of law and the Constitution is “the raison d’être of our party”. But Omtzigt has not ruled out Wilders.
There is no movement within the VVD. Party leader Dilan Yesilgöz does not want to be in a cabinet with the PVV, but it is possible to discuss tolerance support with her. “We are not sticklers,” Yesilgöz said before her conversation with the other party leaders. And without the VVD, a right-wing majority cabinet is impossible, the cabinet where Plasterk in his last column dreamed of: “All in all, there are no serious alternative coalitions. The formation is not extremely complicated and does not have to take very long.”
Difficult relationship with the left
Although Ronald Plasterk has been a PvdA member for 46 years, as he himself said, his relationship with his own political family is complicated. He has a difficult relationship with Frans Timmermans, party leader of GroenLinks-PvdA. They will meet on Wednesday, after Plasterk’s conversation with Wilders (he works from large to small). Plasterk said in 2016 in de Volkskrant that Timmermans, as a Member of Parliament six years earlier, had “held his breath” until he was appointed spokesperson for Foreign Affairs. “He said: ‘Well, then I’ll just do nothing’.”
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In his column, Ronald Plasterk already took an advance on the formation
Plasterk now says that there are “misunderstandings” about the interview, and that he had apologized to Timmermans. The latter responded sparingly when asked about Plasterk’s columns: “I never read them.” He always gets told “when he has lashed out at me again, but I am used to that.”