Mayor Jaap Velema of Westerwolde, which includes Ter Apel, jumped out of his skin at the sudden torpedoing of the dispersal law in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
To the surprise of a large part of the House, Dilan Yeşilgöz of the VVD submitted a motion to ask the outgoing cabinet to put an end to the dispersal law, so that the law can no longer be discussed in the Senate. The law has already been adopted by the old House of Representatives.
Mayor Velema was already present in the House of Representatives to lobby for housing for status holders. But he also had no idea that the VVD motion would suddenly emerge after a day of quiet meetings.
Velema first responds with an expletive. Then a little more diplomatically: “This is the bankruptcy of Dutch politics. Incomprehensible, I am shocked. This is a slap in the face to everyone who works hard day and night to organize enough shelter for people. So many people are already burned out by how all this is going, and then you get this.”
Christian Union: ‘This is a gang’
The entire opposition also reacted angrily. Even SGP member Chris Stoffer didn’t think it was nice. “Even though I do not support the content of the dispersal law, I am still going to vote against it.”
Christian Union MP Pieter Grinwis called Yeşilgöz’s action a “gang” and “constitutional vandalism”.
The arrows of parties such as GroenLinks-PvdA and D66 were mainly aimed at Pieter Omtzigt of NSC, who wants to form the new government together with BBB and the PVV and support the VVD motion. The other parties say that they did not expect this “trick” from Omtzigt.
The anger was particularly great because the House of Representatives spent the entire day quietly debating fundamental rights and respecting other people’s opinions. Geert Wilders in particular promised to do this in the near future. The atmosphere was therefore quite relaxed.
Until suddenly Yeşilgöz came up with her motion. Rob Jetten of D66 predicted that the current outgoing cabinet will have a very difficult time with this. “It could be that part of the outgoing cabinet will resign on Friday because of this.”
It is remarkable that the new House of Representatives agreed last week to discuss the dispersal law in the Senate. At the time, the VVD and NSC still thought it was neat to simply follow the existing procedures.
Motion postponed
Because the motion came out of nowhere, Frans Timmermans of GL-PvdA urged the Speaker of the House to withdraw the motion. Temporary chairman Roelien Kamminga initially rejected that request, but later changed his mind. According to her, it is indeed an unusual call, but she is still having the Ministry of Justice and Security investigate whether this request is permitted. The outcome did not come again on Wednesday.
Yesilgöz kept the motion, she wants to vote on the proposal again “as soon as possible”. “We can’t pretend that the election results don’t exist, can we?” We just don’t want irreversible steps to be taken.”
The motion could have consequences for the already outgoing cabinet. CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie took out their frustration on the VVD. The four still supply ministers to Rutte IV. Parties can withdraw their ministers. That question remains unanswered for a while due to the postponement of the vote.