Sometimes they looked a bit cheap. The pleas to vote right now, while elsewhere in Europe there was a fight to be able to continue to do so. As if you can really compare a war with a vote. A cynic could even have one How can I make this about me?-moment in seeing, to the popular account on social media that collects expressions of digital narcissism. And: do we really need a war to make our way to a polling station anywhere in the past three (!) days?
But there was no escaping the coincidence of the party of our democracy and the death throes of that of the Ukrainians. Not even during the results evening at the NOS. At the bottom of the screen, news flashes from the front regularly appeared. That had an at times surrealistic effect.
“Biden: ‘Putin is a war criminal’”, it said, for example, while one after the other Dutch party leader bowed their heads too prematurely (Hoekstra) or heard crowing victory (the rest). “Kremlin: ‘Biden’s statements unacceptable'”, it subsequently read, while the viewer saw a parade of exuberantly bubbling cadre of constantly changing parties pass by. Councilor Peter Visser of Breda Decided went to get a beer: “I came back and there was a seat.” Iris Verhaasdonk of the SP in Breda kept her wine “in front of the picture” but out of the picture for a while. “Fear of many victims after attack on Mariupol theater,” the news sticker rattled a little further. Meanwhile, the assembled experts in the studio were puzzling over the turnout figures, which – as Rob Trip stated in his closing speech to the viewer – seemed “historically low, yet not dramatic”, now that only a very narrow majority of the Dutch electorate is convinced. deigned to vote.
Technical issues
You could wonder why the viewer still had to be pointed to Ukraine news even during results evening. Especially because news hour was already performing this task on NPO2. Furthermore, a technical problem at the results desk caused the necessary confusion. Forum for Democracy initially seemed to have three seats in Rotterdam. There should have been one seat. Jesus lives was mistakenly assigned the seat of Bij1 in the same graph. RTL gave the floor to a cheering party leader, for whom no wonder was of course too big. However, they had to quickly rectify this miracle. It was noticed that the NOS himself failed to do this.
However, the number of the evening was 32. The percentage of voters who did not vote because they did not know which party to vote for. Professor Carolien van Ham, who occasionally commented on the questions asked in the NOS/Ipsos surveys – “that’s what you get when you invite a scientist” – pointed out that this was a doubling compared to four years ago.
You wonder with what eyes a newly arrived Ukrainian refugee would look at the results evening. Welcome to a country where voters have so many abbreviations to choose from that it leaves voters distraught. A country in which everyone can declare themselves the winner of the elections, because there is always a ‘plus’ for your party or interest somewhere in the electoral numbers. A country that allows itself so much division that formation in many places seems a bigger task than governing.
At the goodnight kiss that the EO like every evening when the second network closes hands out a journalist spoke about how her body brought her to a standstill after a period of mourning. She thanked her body for it.
A striking picture, well, with the dramatically low turnout. The democratic burnout of a country paralyzed by its own democratic prosperity.
This column will be written by various authors until April 25.