The alderman with the characteristic ponytail will no longer be in office after next Tuesday. The 70-year-old Jaap van der Haar of Sterk Meppel gives up the baton after four years, despite the fact that he could have remained a councilor for another term.
The choice to stop is not a difficult one for Van der Haar. He has two obvious reasons for this. “The one side is that in my life I’ve seen too many people who were over seventy in positions of responsibility and didn’t realize that they weren’t quite keeping up with the times. So I’d rather stop when I feel like that it goes really well, then that I stay put. The other side: statistically, I still have sixteen years to go. A lecture period is four years, a quarter of that. That is too much for me,” he says in the Radio Drenthe- program Cassata.
He calls the fact that 72-year-old Albert Haar will become part-time alderman in De Wolden ‘very tight’. “But there is no part-time alderman. You are 24 hours, seven days a week. Even when you are eating in the village, people come and sit at your table. When you do your shopping at the Albert Heijn, you are approached. very intensive job, even if he doesn’t have such an intensive portfolio. And when you’re 72, you’re past your peak in energy level, even though you can still be on your toes. Anyway, it’s his choice.”
Sterk Meppel is the largest party in Meppel with seven seats. Together with the VVD (four) and D66 (two) they form the new coalition. Despite the fact that Van der Haar’s party is the largest, they do not get a second alderman. “I don’t fully understand that either, as far as I am concerned, that was also the purpose of the negotiations,” says Van der Haar. “The six of them have two aldermen, while Sterk Meppel has only one with seven seats. Didn’t negotiate smartly? I don’t know, I was not involved. I only know that they have bet on two aldermen and that they came up with one.”
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