Khadija Arib has left the House of Representatives without saying goodbye. The committee that is to prepare the investigation into corona is without a chairman. The affected PvdA party has been accused by Arib of a lack of support. The management team of the House of Representatives has laid down its tasks. PvdA Member of Parliament Henk Nijboer has stepped down from that presidium. Bergkamp, who already enjoyed little authority, was badly damaged. The parliamentary committee that deals with the working method has shown itself with a completely unhinged behavior and in fact, all in all, the entire House of Representatives has suffered damage.
What a mess.
Now that Bergkamp can stay in place at least for the time being and an external investigation into alleged misconduct by her predecessor can continue, it was found somewhere last week that the worst storm had passed. But only then can you properly oversee the debris.
How could this derail like that?
The nice thing is, and there is a lesson for a lot of other organizations that have to deal with complaints about ‘social insecurity’ and who, like so many, are looking for the best way to respond, that there is one source for much of the misery.
Shortly after the news came out – ‘insiders’ decided the outside world via NRC rather than inform Arib himself – I wanted to be careful about open judgement. But to be honest, there was something that made some impression on me. In that first NRCstory not only stated that there were two anonymous letters with complaints about Arib. And not only that the official leadership of the House of Representatives ‘confirmed’ the complaints in that letter. It also stated that ‘signals had been known for some time about Arib’s position as chairman’, which were ‘concreted’ in an advice to the presidium obtained from the state lawyer. And how: ‘In June last year, company doctors and confidential counselors of the House of Representatives wrote to chairman Bergkamp that they had spoken to 23 employees in three and a half years’consistent complaints‘ about ‘undesirable behaviour’ from Arib.’
An anonymous letter was quickly written. But 23 unambiguous complaints about one person? That sounded like something had to be going on.
We now know that it isn’t true. It concerned all complaints about undesirable behavior within the House organisation, from whomsoever. The confidential counselors did not name names. NRC has this finally corrected. The journalists involved emphasize that the letter was not decisive for the investigation into Arib. But unfortunately that makes the mistake more serious, not better. Because then it could have been clear from the start that there are only two main grounds for the investigation: the anonymous letters and the confirmation of incidents described in the letter by the official management, who also said that they themselves had been troubled by the ‘socially unsafe working atmosphere’.
And the latter has weighed very heavily. A game changer, Bergkamp called it this week. As a result, she had come to read anonymous reports, which would normally not in themselves justify an investigation, very differently.
Well, there, then, that game changer should have set off alarm bells. Immediately Bergkamp should have said: it’s good that you share this, that should also be investigated, but then you will be so involved that from now on you can no longer have any involvement in this matter.
That’s not how it went. Bergkamp and the presidium continued to work on the investigation for a long time, together with top officials who had already drawn their conclusion about Arib. As this newspaper revealed, the management of the hired company investigation agency was even entrusted to one of them.
Bergkamp exhausts himself with formalities that must show that she, the presidium and those officials really did not want to interfere with the substantive investigation. But that this will not last, is already apparent from the bizarre assignment to only investigate Arib. So no investigation into the official leadership, which is primarily responsible for social safety. No investigation into Bergkamp himself and into Vice-President Martin Bosma (PVV), who were already members of the Presidium in the relevant period and should therefore have supervised this. That’s already there previous signs had been of a culture of fear under Arib, have seen them merely as ammunition to go after her, instead of asking, What does this actually say about us?
From the outside, especially in retrospect, it seems so clear. And now, under pressure from the House, these flaws have been removed from the investigation. So how is it that in all those meetings about this no one has raised their hand to say: guys, this is not possible? Opportunism, sure. And my suspicion: most people overestimate their ability to reflect on their own role and do not look for their blind spots. Managers are most susceptible to this ailment, because they get little resistance, while the mess they cause is the greatest. And if, like these top officials, you are also convinced that someone has wronged you for years, then there is little left of your judgment.
Why do leaders so often make the same mistakes? Because they do not look for their own wrong, explains economist Marilieke Engbers, who listened in dozens of times like a fly on the wall at the top of administrative Netherlands. She speaks with Kustaw Bessems in the Volkskrantpodcast Rudderless.