“With a small number of seats, it often paralyzes the parliamentary order. And now it is knocking on the doors of council chambers in all parts of the Netherlands,” says Kaag. She does not make it explicit in her speech, but the D66 leader clearly refers to Forum for Democracy.
Holocaust
According to Kaag, the municipal elections are dominated by the fight against the ‘extreme right’. “In our parliament, there is talk of ‘tribunals’ (that’s what FvD MP Van Houwelingen threatened D66 MP Sjoerdsma with, ed.). Journalists are cornered as ‘lackeys of power’. MPs are intimidated by colleagues, which makes them feel less free to speak out. Actions necessary to protect our health are compared to the Holocaust, which downplays the greatest crime in human history.”
Kaag declares that her party will also exclude FvD at the local level, and calls on other parties to do the same, and to speak out openly. “Not after the election, but before that.”
PVV and FvD
After the campaign meeting, Kaag told media that it concerns both FvD and PVV. Excluding the PVV is an election tradition at D66, and FvD was also excluded in advance in the recent parliamentary elections.
GL leader Jesse Klaver speaks similar words at his party congress. Klaver argues that the FvD is carrying out a ‘systemic attack on the democratic constitutional state’, and fears that this will lead to political violence such as happened in Washington last January, during the storming of the Capitol.
“Don’t let it get to that point in the Netherlands. Here too, there are politicians who incite people, intimidate opponents and refuse to accept decisions by democratic majorities,” Klaver said. His party will not go into business with FvD and PVV, he announces. “And I also call on other politicians who love democracy: don’t do it.”
PVV leader Geert Wilders responds Saturday directly on Twitter: “What arrogance to stop more than a million PVV members in the wrong camp. D66 and GroenLinks thus demonstrate that they are the new fascists of 2022,” said Wilders.
“That’s convenient because we don’t want to rule with them either!”
“That’s great because we don’t want to rule with them either!,” adds a spokesperson for the FvD when asked.
Shortly after the speeches by Kaag and Klaver, VVD leader Mark Rutte and CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra also announced that they were not in favor of local cooperation with those two parties. Rutte calls on his local party members to ignore those parties as well. FvD finds Rutte ‘indecent, with those tribunals and such’ and PVV members are, as far as he is concerned, ‘runaways,’ he said on a campaign tour in Leiden.
Hoekstra leaves it to the local CDA departments, “but I don’t think it is possible,” said Hoekstra. “I have already said as CDA leader that we would not cooperate with it. Over the past period we have seen that even more questionable texts have been added,” he says about FvD. He points to statements by party leader Thierry Baudet about the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine. “I think this is political rioting,” said Hoekstra, who recently became Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Earlier, VVD and CDA were together with Forum in a coalition in the province of North Brabant. That collaboration came to an end last May.