Former Deputy Prime Minister Mona Keijzer is no longer a BBB member. On the stage of the BBB members meeting in Barneveld, just before half past nine on Friday evening, she renounces her membership of the party. A man who had always sat near her, in the back row, gives her flowers. There is clapping in the room and with many cameras and journalists around, Keijzer is not standing near the bar. Then suddenly there is loud applause, almost all BBB members stand up, there is cheering – Keijzer looks to the side. On the stage is Henk Vermeer, Caroline van der Plas’s successor as party leader.
Keijzer had just said that she had been promised that position after the election campaign, which had been “disappointing”. And that apparently that appointment had been worthless. In return for NRCalready outside, she says that she had not thought in advance that she was going to cancel her BBB membership that evening. “I had prepared a speech that could have gone either way.”
But she said she expected nothing more from the mediation that had been proposed in a motion and had not yet been voted on. Her idea was: if the party had seriously wanted that, someone from the party board would have come to her to discuss it. That, she says, could also have been done on Friday evening. “I know how to handle something like that. But there was no rapprochement whatsoever.”
In February, when Van der Plas handed over party leadership to Henk Vermeer, Keijzer had already left the BBB House of Representatives faction. She had continued on her own as ‘member Keijzer’. It had caused great unrest among BBB employees in the country, and also among BBB employees in the House of Representatives, some of whom joined Keijzer – they now work for her.
‘Mona back’
The BBB members in the room in Barneveld, there are about six hundred of them, find it exciting at the beginning of the evening: can the argument still be settled? And will they be told what exactly it was about? Was it about a broken promise, as Keijzer had said before, or about BBB’s ideas?
Jacob IJsselstein, 21 years old, BBB member from Friesland, says before the meeting that he came to Barneveld “with a depressed heart”. During the campaign he had found it “difficult” that BBB had made such a big deal about Islam: “Especially because of Mona Keijzer and the people around her.” According to him, it had become “the heart of BBB’s message.” But according to IJsselstein, BBB must again revolve around “the region, the countryside”.
This is not discussed at the members’ meeting. There are BBB members who stand up for Keijzer and receive support for it, although this does not come from the entire audience. It is true that many BBB members send the message to a large screen via their telephone, in a short round of questions, that ‘Mona must be returned’: that sentence is the largest. There are also those who long for ‘reconciliation’ or, on the contrary, the departure of Van der Plas. It can also be read that ‘Mona has to go’.
‘Member Keijzer’
Member of Parliament Robert van Gasteren of BBB was the first to cancel his membership of the party on stage on Friday evening. He does not think BBB is professional, he feels “abandoned” by the party. Van Gasteren says that he will remain a member of the BBB faction in the Senate. “I have no problem with the faction.”
Senate President Ilona Lagas, also in Barneveld, later says that she knew nothing and that she does not yet want to say whether he could really stay in the group. “We all have to talk about that first in our meeting on Tuesday.”
Mona Keijzer no longer belonged to the BBB House of Representatives faction, and mediation is no longer voted on in Barneveld. She will remain ‘member Keijzer’ for the foreseeable future, and there is talk in the corridors of the House of Representatives that the Markuszower Group, with seven ex-PVV members, has been trying to get closer to her for some time.
“I will continue with my Chamber work next week,” says Keijzer at the exit. And now? “Go home, have a glass of wine.”
Henk Vermeer says next to the podium that there is “clarity”: the three of them will continue as a faction, himself, Van der Plas and Femke Wiersma. He found the support he received from the audience “nice”. And further: “It’s always a shame when members leave.”
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