It was a long wait for the redeeming answer, but he does it anyway. Independent Member of Parliament Pieter Omtzigt will participate in the parliamentary elections in November and will set up his own party for this purpose, which will be called New Social Contract. Omtzigt announced this on Sunday evening in an interview with the newspaper Tubantia. The decision of the popular Omtzigt has been eagerly awaited at the Binnenhof for weeks, who scored dozens of seats in some opinion polls with a fictional party alone.
Omtzigt also shared a video on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday evening, in which he explains his decision. “Our country has major problems and they require a new way of doing politics,” he says. Omtzigt speaks of “a board that does not function properly”. “We have crisis after crisis and we can’t solve them.”
Management culture and social security
With New Social Contract, Omtzigt will mainly focus on improving the management culture. To achieve this, he wants, among other things, to set up a Constitutional Court and introduce a new electoral system. Another spearhead of his party program is improving social security. “According to the Red Cross, 400,000 people in the Netherlands live in food poverty,” said the politician. “That was really not the case ten years ago.” He wants the party to become a movement that is active in society, including at a local level.
The time for Omtzigt to prepare the elections with his new party is extremely short. In Tubantia he says he does not yet have a list of candidates, but he has already had hundreds of applications and is already talking to people. Omtzigt has until October 9 to draw up a list of candidates. The core team that helps him includes a number of prominent ex-CDA members, including Hein Pieper, who will become party chairman of New Social Contract, and former CDA deputy Eddy van Hijum, who will write the election programme.
Read also: That is how Pieter Omtzigt voted
Popular in polls
Omtzigt seems to have to come up with a long list of candidates because some polls suggest that he can win more than forty seats. He himself does not call this responsible in Tubantia. “I must say that this pattern of expectations has not made it any easier to take the plunge and decide to set up your own party,” says Omtzigt. “So no, we don’t want to get 46 seats in one go, but start a party with responsible growth.”
Omtzigt also says in the interview that he wants to become party chairman of his new party in the House of Representatives after the elections, and has no ambition to become prime minister. He does not yet have a candidate for prime minister. Omtzigt says he would like to bear government responsibility if his party gets that chance from the voter. He says about possible coalition partners that parties for him must “meet the basic conditions of the rule of law” and that is why Omtzigt sees coalition cooperation with the PVV and FVD “not happening”.
Threat to many parties
The news that Omzigt is participating with its own party will not have been received with cheers by many other parties. The CDA, the party Omtzigt broke with in 2021, presented the relatively unknown Member of Parliament Henri Bontenbal as the new party leader last week and is doing badly in the polls. Within the CDA, Omtzigt had a lot of sympathy with some of the members, so New Social Contract is a serious competitor for the Christian Democrats. This also seems to apply to the BoerBurgerBeweging, which scores well in the polls, but according to the same polls can lose many seats to Omtzigt. But many more parties, from the left-wing SP to the right-wing VVD, will be concerned about his great popularity.
The entrance of Omtzigt makes the upcoming election campaign even more unpredictable. The political playing field was already completely open due to Mark Rutte’s announcement to step down as VVD leader, which means that several parties seem to have a chance to become the largest party and thus leave their mark on cabinet policy. Omtzigt also adds something new to the upcoming campaign in terms of content. Whereas the VVD has recently looked for a profile on asylum and migration, PvdA-GroenLinks mainly on climate and the BBB on agriculture and nitrogen, Omtzigt introduces two other themes with management culture and social security.
Known for surcharge affair
In 2003 Omtzigt came to the House of Representatives for the CDA. The 49-year-old politician mainly gained national fame for his efforts during the Supplementary Affair, something he has stuck to for years with SP colleague Renske Leijten and DENK party leader Farid Azarkan.
In 2021, Omtzigt will be at home with a burnout. Shortly after the elections, a discussion arose about a ‘position elsewhere’ that the cabinet would have in mind for him. Despite heated debates, Rutte-IV is standing on the platform after a long formation, consisting of the same parties as Rutte-III. For Omtzigt it is the last straw. He leaves the CDA and takes a seat in parliament as an independent member of parliament.