If there is a new House of Representatives after the elections on 22 November, the parties will have to sit together and no longer as they do now: with left-wing parties on the left side of the room and right-wing parties on the right. In the HJ Schoo lecture in Amsterdam on Monday evening, BBB leader Caroline van der Plas said that she will present that idea, copied from Iceland, immediately after the elections to the presidium, the day-to-day management of the House of Representatives where BBB is still not in it. “The Dutch do not live on a spectrum from left to right.” She thinks that a new way of allocating places, which should be determined by drawing lots, will give “an entirely new dynamic” to the House of Representatives.
Van der Plas also wants that there will be no coalition agreement afterwards, but a “directive agreement”: “A vision of long-term policy in the Netherlands in which entrepreneurs, farmers and citizens are given the confidence to help shape this.” The House of Representatives would then have to debate the progress of that agreement once a year. She repeated an earlier promise: if BBB joins the government, she will remain in the House of Representatives. “In the footsteps of someone like Frits Bolkestein, who also consciously chose not to become a minister or prime minister, but an inspector of the cabinet. Also from his own cabinet. Just from his own cabinet. He chose to be lion, rather than lamb.”
Hard blows
The HJ Schoo lecture in the Rode Hoed is organized every year by EW, formerly Elsevier, and is seen as the unofficial opening of the parliamentary year. Last year the lecture was given by outgoing justice minister Dilan Yesilgöz, who is now also VVD party leader. She then chose to lash out hard at FVD leader Thierry Baudet. Previously, former political leaders Sigrid Kaag (D66), Wopke Hoekstra (CDA) and Mark Rutte (VVD) also held the lecture. In her lecture, Kaag lashed out sharply at Rutte, who, according to her, “arranged and rustled, without vision”.
Van der Plas used the Amsterdam stage for a story against polarization and for restoring citizens’ confidence in politics. BBB, she said, wants a completely different government. Where not only ‘theoretically trained’ but also MBO students are policy officers, or Members of Parliament, Ministers, State Secretary. “Now too many good people with practical experience are held back by a diploma ceiling. In an application procedure, practical experience should take precedence over formal training requirements.”
She stated that “polarization, hate speech, aggression and hostility” creates a “grim, unsafe environment”
In the first version of her lecture, already published in a booklet, Van der Plas sneered at opinion maker Sander Schimmelpenninck and GroenLinks-PvdA party leader Frans Timmermans, which she took out again in the spoken version. She first intended to say to people who have “an opinion that is unwelcome to you”, but should not be “shoveled down Sander Schimmelpennincks the way” but should be taken seriously. Because what people bring up at birthdays, at drinks or in sports canteens you can call “gut feelings”, she said. But those are feelings too.
About Timmermans it was first said that he would find it “very nice” if the elections were mainly prime ministerial elections. “It makes him imaginatively big.” But he would become part of the “blue chair brigade”: “People’s Representative. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.”
On the day of the lecture, Van der Plas realized that she did not want to lash out at people at all in her story. She later said: “We really want this to be a different kind of campaign, for a different kind of politics. Then you have to set a good example yourself. You could call the fact that I left this out advancing insight.”
‘Sounds of Silence’
In her lecture she said that people in the Netherlands should listen to each other better and on stage she sang a passage from the song ‘Sounds of Silence’ by Simon & Garfunkel, in which she was particularly concerned, she said, with the sentence “people hearing without listening”.
She made a point of “polarization, hate speech, aggression and hostility” which she says creates a “grim, unsafe environment”: “This prevents people from actively participating in the social debate.”
According to Van der Plas, politicians are “joyfully participating”. “Just watch the coming months until November 22. I already hear from factions that they are going to take this or that one. That they are going to attack party A or party B. No vision, no discussion about what you want as a party. No, we’re going to get each other. Well, I pass for it. Then a soft one. I don’t feel like it at all. And I am sure: the majority of the Netherlands no longer feel like it.”
After the lecture, someone from the audience asked her what she thought about the parties that were adopting positions from her. Van der Plas laughed and said in Sallands: “They are all afraid of BBB.”