Geert Wilders is also controversial in the country’s most influential talk show: where Albert Verlinde embraced him the day before yesterday in VI, Job Knoester sabered him down hard yesterday. “Evil!”
Albert Verlinde, VVD councilor in Vught, said in Today Inside that his party should leave the door ajar for cooperation with Geert Wilders. He believes that you cannot exclude the PVV election after election and even thinks that a coalition with this political party should be an option. And that comes at a lot of criticism.
Albert under fire
Parool columnist Johan Fretz thinks Albert goes too far. “Albert Verlinde would like to work with a party leader who has been convicted of racial discrimination, clearly”, he summarizes in his Instagram stories.
There is also criticism on other social media, for example from one Jan van Venrooij X: “Normally you don’t exclude parties in advance. But PVV, FvD and JA21 are not normal parties. They exist to undermine parliamentary democracy and the rule of law and to disrupt society.”
Dissenting opinion
Arend Jan Boekestijn thinks that Wilders is normalized too much in VI. Wilfred Genee, who maintains contact with this opinion maker, yesterday in the talk show: “He finds it strange that cooperation with the PVV could also be an option, that this is advocated in this program, because he still thinks it is not such a good option.”
Everyone has their own opinion, responds Johan Derksen. “Isn’t that allowed? Are you allowed to have a different opinion? Look, I have nothing to do with the PVV and they have a few things in their party program that I find pernicious, but I also think it is pernicious that a whole group of Dutch people are always thrown into the trash after the election, like: you are not participating . “
Job bashs
Johan thinks that is ‘going very far’. “It has nothing to do with democracy. Whatever I said yesterday: if such a PVV participates in the coalition talks, then the crazy things they have planned will really be sifted out.”
Job Knoester then starts with a decent PVV bash. “I doubt that with these programs. I once watched that PVV program, especially on the rule of law, because that is my field of expertise and then I am really shocked by a lot of things. They say: ‘We want safety’, but they want to abolish TBS! That is three to four times more risk of serious crimes.”
Dangerous lot
According to Job, the PVV also wants to abolish community service and shame the perpetrators of sex crimes online. The party ‘puts away the rule of law’, he says. “I actually think it is a dangerous party.”
Johan: “You come up with good arguments, you come from the profession, you have a lot of experience with those people. If you explain that… They apparently don’t have a good lawyer in their midst.”
Job: “That’s not true. They have very good lawyers. Lilian Helder, for example, was a good lawyer. Those people really know what they are doing and Wilders knows quite well that TBS makes our country safer. They’re really not stupid. It’s just evil.”
‘quite extreme’
Johan: “Yes, but when I hear the Party for the Animals, I also think: they have completely lost their way.”
Wilfred Genee: “Yes, but they don’t have these kind of views, which are quite extreme.”
Johan: “No, but we also know that those views are extreme, but again: different views, different opinions… There are a lot of people in the Netherlands who vote for it and apparently agree with it.”
Safe house
Wilfred: “Then I turn it around: if those positions are removed, will those people still vote for the PVV?”
Johan: “You have to enter into a discussion with them, but don’t push such a large group of Dutch people away.”
Wilders has too long in one safe house seated, Job concludes. “I also think that your world will be cut up.”