On Saturday afternoon in the center of Utrecht, the local PvdA politicians are short of red roses, so many shoppers want one. One of the PvdA members rushes to a flower stall on Vredenburgplein and buys an extra bunch. There were no more red roses, so he went for orange-red. They go well with the orange, woolen coat that national party leader Lilianne Ploumen is wearing this afternoon, while she is campaigning through the city with about thirty Utrecht PvdA members.
Although a lot of roses are handed out and most Utrechters accept them in a friendly or even enthusiastic manner (“Don’t forget to vote!”, Ploumen always says), we only have a chat a few times. A boy from the flower stall at the town hall is worried about the future of the flower stalls in Utrecht. He says that the municipality is making fewer and fewer pitches available. Can the Labor Party do something about it? Ploumen and the local party leader Rick van der Zweth look at him with compassion and urge him to send an email to Van der Zweth with his story. “Then I’ll let you hear something.”
This afternoon is not about the war in Ukraine. “Maybe because the people of Utrecht are shopping and the sun is shining. But many conversations that I had with people on the street in recent days were about it,” says Ploumen, when she has finished her tour through the center after about an hour. On the collar of her jacket is a button of the Ukrainian flag. “Initially they talk about the bigger picture, about the horrors. This is followed by questions such as: how should we pay the bills?” According to Ploumen, there are at the same time people who say that voting is especially important now. “They see that it can just happen that a democracy is attacked.”
This article is also part of our live blog: Hoekstra: FVD and PVV cause ‘cracks’ in democracy