Exactly twenty years ago, Pim Fortuyn was in Breda. In the Amrâth Hotel Brabant he attended a meeting with a few hundred invited guests. It was his last official appearance in our country, before he was shot dead in Hilversum later that day. A look back at that meeting.
It is May 6, 2002. Pim Fortuyn gives a little boy a pat on the head when he leaves the Amrâth Hotel Brabant in Breda. Full of adrenaline, after yet another discussion with the press, he gets into the car. It is driven by its regular driver, Tilburger Hans Smolders. He is on his way to Hilversum where he would be shot not much later.
LPF on gain before elections
The meeting in the hotel was organized by BN De Stem and was dominated by the elections to the House of Representatives that would take place a few days later. Given the forecasts, the Pim Fortuyn List could become the big winner, with the bald foreman as the intended prime minister.
Two hundred people sat in the great hall of the hotel; the free cards were distributed in no time. The newspaper had hired three security guards to keep an eye on things. According to Smolders, Fortuyn was in constant danger, but his threats were never taken seriously. The Rotterdam party leader himself apparently did not care much about it. Everywhere, on the street and during meetings such as the election debate in Breda, he did not shy away from discussions.
‘us and you’
Our former colleague Mark Bos also experienced this firsthand. He confronted Fortuyn in Breda with the fact that he kept talking about ‘we in the Randstad’ and ‘you’, the people outside it. Slightly agitated, Fortuyn replied as if that were the most natural thing in the world: “You live here and I live in Rotterdam.” But then he doesn’t want to become prime minister ‘of all of us’, Bos then put to him. Fortuyn, replicating with a smile: “I will be too.” It has never come to that due to the assassination attempt by Volkert van der Graaf.
The LPF would eventually win 26 seats and the established order, which Fortuyn wanted to make short work of, suffered a major defeat. In the end it turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the LPF, because as a ruling party it has never been able to profile itself. Let alone the way Fortuyn had it in mind.
Omroep Brabant made a report about the meeting in the hotel in Breda and spoke to Thom de Graaff (D66), who was a guest at Omroep Brabant at the time and responded to the assassination attempt: