The time of Harm Holman (NSC) from Roden in the House of Representatives is over. The 68-year-old Drent will not return to national politics after the elections. Holman looks back on an eventful period in The Hague, in which he deals with populism and explains what he thinks livestock farming should look like.
It will take a lot of getting used to, Harm Holman admits. His phone was ringing off the hook for almost seven hundred days. The average screen time? Well over five hours a day. He followed talk shows, read newspapers and opinions, and kept up with all relevant developments. But from November 11, when he officially says goodbye to Parliament, it will all be over.
“I’m going to take it a lot easier,” says Holman about his new life. The House is now on election recess. The crowds for departing MPs have already decreased considerably; the message flow on his phone has stopped.
Holman has slept a lot in the past week. “You should just get rid of the bags in the photo,” he says jokingly.
At the dining table in Roden he discusses the politics of the past two years. He notes that, in retrospect, the coalition between his party NSC and partners BBB, PVV and VVD was doomed to failure.
Negotiations were anything but harmonious from the start. The agreement between the parties was too vague and certain positions were forced down each other’s throats. According to Holman, PVV and BBB took extreme positions and VVD and NSC had to make sense of it.
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