‘Leo!’ shouts a man who approaches Leo’s Coffee House. ‘I came in at the polling station and they already knew who I was going to vote for. They said: number 35 surely? Have you been very busy at that polling station?’
Leo Dommanchet laughs. Yes, 35 is his place on the list of Hart voor The Hague, also known as Groep De Mos. The list pusher wears a T-shirt with the print ‘ADO Praat’, the football program of The Hague FM in which he participates every week. “Everyone knows me here.”
There are a total of 45 seats to be allocated in the city and party leader Richard de Mos has been calling for 15 throughout the campaign. It would be more than double the current number by which it is already the shared largest. Even with such a victory, there is no great chance that Dommanchet will be allowed to take a seat in the city council. “Yeah, dude,” he says. “With enough preference votes, I’ll just get in.”
Stand for an hour on the corner in front of Leo’s Koffiehuis, in the heart of the Laakkwartier, and it seems that those voices will indeed be okay. Local residents constantly pass by and shout to Dommanchet that they are going to vote for him. A red car stops briefly, the window opens: ‘Number 35, right Leo?’
“Number 35, Fer!”
Naples on the North Sea
In Leo’s Koffiehuis – painted in the greenish yellow of The Hague – a few men are drinking coffee. One slides a 50 note into the slot machine. They come from Rijswijk, near here, and unfortunately are not allowed to vote for Dommanchet or De Mos. And with de Volkskrant they don’t want to talk anyway. “Too left!”
Here in the working-class district of Laak they are a big fan of Richard de Mos, the former PVV member who caused a furore locally. Four years ago, his party became the largest in The Hague, but after a year and a half he had to resign because the Public Prosecution Service suspected him of corruption. As alderman for economic affairs, he is said to have provided permits, confidential information and influence on coalition policy to befriended real estate and catering entrepreneurs in exchange for tens of thousands of euros in party donations. The Hague was called ‘Naples on the North Sea’.
Now, two and a half years later, De Mos has still not been prosecuted. A bad sign, according to the folks here. De Mos is simply at the top of the polls. ‘If they have such strong suspicions against him, why don’t they come up with evidence?’, says Sigrid Grotens (67), who arrives with a trolley.
According to her, De Mos just has a different way of fundraising. ‘Very American. Companies that make donations.’ He has to, she says, because local parties do not receive any subsidy. And if De Mos is nevertheless convicted, Rita Verdonk, the number 2 on the list, is ready to take over. Fine, as far as Grotens is concerned.
She was ‘born and raised’ in Laak. ‘It’s a small village here. We know us.’ A nice neighbourhood, she says, despite all the problems. She lists the most important ones: waste, overcrowding and parking. All can be reduced to one point: The Hague is too full. De Mos has called for a migration stop: no more status holders and fewer labor migrants.
‘One rents a house and the rest moves in’, says Grotens. ‘They work in the Westland, but live here. And when they move, the entire household effects are on the doorstep.’ She is secretary of the Laak Central district council. ‘If we file a complaint, they will immediately arrange it at Hart voor Den Haag. While it is much more difficult for the municipality to move.’
‘Ombuds policy’ is what they call it at Hart voor The Hague. In the words of De Mos: ‘Standing up for the interests of citizens and small entrepreneurs, who are bulldozed by the municipal regulations bulldozer.’ A waste container that is always full, a crooked paving stone, an awkward disabled parking space – nothing is too small for De Mos.
rooting
When asked about Hart voor Den Haag, everyone says a variant of the same in Laak: the only visible party here. ‘The Moss comes among the people’, says Jarno Boutkan. “I’ve never seen another politician here.”
Further down Oudemansstraat, a poster of Hart for The Hague hangs in the window of Lia (67) and Kees Visser (71). ‘You only see other parties here during election time,’ says Lia. ‘Hart voor The Hague is the only party that shows itself to be involved with Laak all year round.’ She also waves the suspicions about De Mos away. “He was too popular, wasn’t he. They just kept digging and rooting until they could pick him up somewhere. And now they have nothing.’
Lia serves a cup of tea in the house where she was born and still lives 67 years ago. She has seen Laak change in that time. ‘It used to be a white working-class district, very cosy, lots of beautiful shops. Now the social structure is gone.’ Kees: ‘We have a hundred nationalities in the area.’
Waste is the biggest problem, says Lia. As an ambassador she tries to make the neighborhood cleaner. ‘On changeover day – when the labor migrants leave – there are dozens of mattresses in front of the door that remain in place for a week. Last week Richard de Mos had put up large campaign signs here. They were removed within a day.’