Former CDA-prominent Piet Bukman, the “sergeant major” of that merger party, died on Wednesday at the age of 88. Bukman played a prominent role in national politics from the foundation of the CDA until 1998. Not only within his own party, of which he was the first chairman, but also as minister and chairman of the House of Representatives. He was a man who “in many years had built up a great track record in party and politics,” says current CDA party leader Wopke Hoekstra in response to his death.
But he was above all the man who gave the new merger party (KVP, ARP and CHU) a face from 1980 onwards. In October of that year he took over the presidency from the other patriarch, Piet Steenkamp, and kept the blood groups within the party together at a time when, among other things, cruise missile deployment and the anti-apartheid policy towards South Africa caused a lot of internal damage. caused division.
He especially ensured that the then Prime Minister Lubbers confessed no nonsensepolicy was also followed in the CDA faction. Despite internal opposition in the form of seven ‘loyalists’ in the group, who tolerated the first Lubbers cabinet but did not fully support the government statement. They reserved the right to test any cabinet proposal against their principles.
A political party is simply ‘not a playground association’, Bukman sometimes justified internally the regentsque way in which he directed party congresses. “I played a bit of the sergeant major of the CDA,” he later acknowledged. But his main concern was to keep the cultural and political differences between the merged blood groups within the CDA together. In practice this mainly meant: to stifle left-wing noise within the CDA as much as possible.
riot
Bukman was born in Delft in 1934 as the descendant of a South Holland horticultural family. Bukman has always remained that way: foreman of the agricultural lobby. First as director of the Christelijke Boeren- en Tuindersbond (CBTB), where he would remain for almost 20 years. There he got to know fellow party members such as Jan de Koning, also one of the founders of the CDA. De Koning, minister in successive cabinets from 1977 and 1989, ensured that Bukman became party chairman in 1980.
In 1986 the ‘sergeant major’ of the CDA was rewarded with a ministerial position in the second Lubbers cabinet. First in the Development Cooperation portfolio, then as State Secretary for Economic Affairs and then as Minister of Agriculture. In that position, he was still the center of a riot in 1994, when a confidential letter from him to party colleague and fellow minister of Economic Affairs Koos Andriessen was leaked, in which he urged to refrain from raising gas prices for horticultural companies because that would lead to too many CDA members. voters would cost.
Chamber presidency
After the huge loss of the CDA in the elections to the House of Representatives in 1994, his party disappeared from the cabinet and Bukman also ended up in the opposition benches of the House of Representatives. In 1996 he succeeded his party colleague Wim Deetman as Speaker of the House of Representatives, but that was not a success.
Former Speakers of Parliament are now praising Bukman. “I have beautiful memories of this special and gentle man, who always retained his love for the House of Representatives,” says Khadija Arib. According to Frans Weisglas, he “always remained involved” in parliament and politics.
But at the time, he was known as the first Speaker of the House of Representatives to be openly criticized for his performance. He would feel the debate badly and pay insufficient attention during votes. Bukman was the first to admit this himself. It was all more complicated than he had previously thought: the presidency of the House fared worse for him than that of his own party: “In practice, this position is more difficult than it seems.”