Thierry Baudet, party leader of Forum for Democracy, transfers the party leader for the upcoming elections to Lidewij De Vos, a party member who is not in the Lower House now. Baudet calls himself “no longer effective” as “face of the party.” He remains party leader and is second on the list of candidates. FVD announced this on Saturday in a press release.
Baudet says he stands in the way of growth of the party “by polarized opinions about me and a blockage that has been going on in the media for five years. That has been partly my own fault – too much a freethinker, too much a flapuit – but also partly caused by framing and being awarded nothing,” according to Baudet.
Unknown name
Forum for Democracy now has three seats in the Lower House and is at 2 to 4 seats in the polls, according to polling guide. This Sunday the party presents its new election program.
Lidewij de Vos is an unknown name for the outside world, but she is appreciated within the party. In the previous parliamentary elections in 2023, Lidewij de Vos was still in sixth place on the list of candidates.
The party leader is for The fox A special birthday present: she will be 28 years old this Saturday. De Vos is now a party employee of the FVD in the Chamber and has studied violin, biochemistry and neuroscience. At the beginning of this year she was the replacement of Baudet for three months when he went on paternity leave. Together with Baudet she also wrote a book About the nitrogen policy: Nobody in the cockpit (2023).
De Vos is skeptical about climate change and nitrogen measures, has turned against the abolition of the mortgage interest deduction if the Netherlands wants to leave the EU and reduce immigration.
New face
With the arrival of De Vos, FVD will get a new face in the Lower House after more than eight years. The party was created as a think tank in 2015, but was converted into a political party following ignoring the results of the referendum on the European Union’s Association Agreement with Ukraine – more than 60 percent voted against, but the House of Representatives ratified the Convention.
In 2017, FVD debuted in the Chamber with two seats. FvD achieved the greatest successes in 2019 from the Provincial States elections when it became the largest, and also reached twelve seats in the Senate. Two years later, the party won eight seats in the parliamentary elections.
In recent years, Baudet has profiled the party mainly on asylum and migration. For example, he wants to close an immediate asylum stop, close boundaries, to cancel mass remigration, Schengen and the UN refugee treaty, and close all AZCs that have been open this year. The FVD MPs are also regularly present in protests against the arrival of new reception centers.
Incidents
Under Baudet, FvD had a turbulent history full of fuss, incidents and splits. For example, Baudet became in 2021 condemned Until a penalty if he would not remove his tweets in which he compared the corona policy with the Holocaust – he removed the tweets on it. Previously he used the term ‘boreal world’ in a speech, which literally means ‘northern’, but because of its use, among others, Jean-Marie Le Pen-who referred to a white, Christian Europe-is a loaded term.
In the Lower House, after a debate, Baudet said, among other things, that he would “hit Jesse Klaver (GroenLinks-Pvda)-later he apologized for that. Also mentioned he in the Chamber, on questions from PVV leader Geert Wilders, the lunar landings and the attacks in the US on 9/11 ‘extremely unlikely’.
Baudet also gave birth to statements in An American podcast In which he said he believed that we are ruled by a global conspiracy of malignant reptiles. He also called Putin “my hero” and said he was a fan of him.
Colleague MPs from Baudet were also discredited. Pepijn van Houwelingen, for example, was fined for an edited tweet with the Nazi flag. In 2024, forum MP Gideon van Meijeren became condemned Up to 200 hours of community service because he had said in an interview to hope for a popular uprising that would overthrow parliament and government.
Recovery
It all also led to countless splits, of which of Ja21 (Joost Eerdmans and Annabel Nanninga) is one of the best known. The number of seats in the room dropped to three.
It is the party that FvD does not seem to be able to grow anymore, especially with ‘the gap on the right political flank’. Now that the PVV has reached little in the cabinet and the VVD sinks into the polls, FVD would like to pick up disappointed PVV voters. The electoral competitor JA21 seems to work for the time being, but not forum. The party devotes that framing of the media who keep coming back on all incidents, and to the fact that Baudet relatively little mainstream media is invited to tell his story.
Apart from the polls, the party does have many members (more than 60,000) and often scores well in elections among high school students. The party is also still represented in the Senate (two seats) and in municipalities and provinces.
With the arrival of a fresh, new face, FVD also hopes to attract new voters. “The movement is much more important than my ego or personal position,” says Baudet in the press release.
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