On Sunday, Volt members gathered for a party conference on Nilüfer Gündogan, and that was due to Friso Datema (22) from Alkmaar. He had already in March asked for such a conference, just after the judge called Gündogan’s suspension as a member of the Volt faction illegal. How could it have gone so wrong?
A tall boy with thick brown hair, a friendly face. Last year he was number 21 on the list of candidates for the House of Representatives, he worked for the faction, now he is doing a premaster at the VU. In the hall, at the congress, he says little. It revolves around him almost all day. Together with ex-municipal candidate Martin Gravelotte, he wrote a motion about a new investigation into Gundogan’s behavior. She would like that too. She doesn’t trust BING, the agency that’s investigating now, and isn’t cooperating with it.
The Volt board and party leader Laurens Dassen do not want a new investigation. The thirteen people who already told BING that Gundogan intimidated them, kissed them on the neck, touched their buttocks, should not think about doing that again, according to the party top. But at the congress a majority decides that it will be voted on anyway, the members have until 6 p.m. on Tuesday.
I think: Friso Datema will be pleased with the success of his motion at his congress. But he looks unhappy at the drink. “I don’t think,” he says, “that I’m still behind it.”
On stage Martin Gravelotte, a friend of Gündogan, had started talking about her idea that a small group had deliberately “discredited” her in order to expel her from the party. In an Amsterdam café, on Tuesday morning, Friso Datema says that he heard Gündogan say the same, yes. She mentioned names of people who she believes are participating in such a “conspiracy”. But he doesn’t believe it. “Then I must have been so wrong about those people.” In addition, he witnessed her up close and saw, he says, how she could do it. “I do not doubt the stories of the reporters, I can imagine that they felt unsafe.”
The fact that he still wanted new research was due to the doubts of others. “If it’s never proven what she’s done, she won’t stop.” And he thought it was necessary to clarify where the boundary lay for Volt. “With us, everyone always talks about values, but everyone means something different by them. What is our yardstick and if you compare her behavior to it, what is the conclusion?”
But if the reporters really find it that difficult, he heard that again on Sunday, he doesn’t need it anymore. “They come first for me.”
On Tuesday evening, it appears that 776 of the nearly one thousand Volt members who voted against Friso Datema’s motion. Himself too.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 28, 2022