PVV members in Drenthe and Groningen had hardly seen their party’s victory coming. Unexpectedly, they may have to travel to The Hague.
Drenthe PVV leader Nico Uppelschoten reacts bewildered. “It is a settlement of the government parties VVD, D66 and CDA,” he says from his car, while he is looking for a meeting of his party in Weerdinge. “I also expected that we would score 30 or 31 seats. But 35 is a lot.” Uppelschoten is chairman of the two-man faction of the PVV in the Drenthe Parliament.
No longer ineligible
A special detail is that Nico Uppelschoten is at number 39 on the list of candidates for the House of Representatives. “I am an informal caregiver, so I said I wanted an unelectable place. But now there’s a good chance I’ll get in. Many higher-ranking candidates will probably move on to the cabinet.”
Uppelschoten (79) says he does not yet know what he will do when he is asked whether he wants to take a seat in the House of Representatives. “That will be complicated.” And before the PVV joins a government, it will have to forge a coalition. With which party should the PVV govern? “Oh dear, I can’t say that yet, I really have to think about that,” says Uppelschoten.
“It looked rosy, but 35?”
Party chairman Tommy Post of the PVV in Emmen says that he saw his party’s victory coming. “I received constant messages from friends and acquaintances that they had voted for Wilders. It looked rosy, but the fact that we will obtain no fewer than 35 seats according to the forecasts also really surprised me.”
From café Weerdinge, where PVV supporters have gathered, there is occasional cheering after the announcement of the exit poll and Geert Wilders’ speech. “We have called on people to look at the results together with us. I estimate that there are at least fifty of us.”
Post does not venture to make statements about which coalition might be possible. “That’s really up to Geert.” He thinks that the PVV won thanks to its adherence to positions on Islam and asylum seekers. “Month after month, people are confronted with increases in the cost of living. In the meantime, house hunters are skipping houses because status holders are being placed there. The incumbent parties did not listen carefully to this. They are now being punished for that.”
Flawless
For Groningen municipal councilor Dennis Ram it was an honor that he came 26th on the PVV list. He did not see it coming that he would become a Member of Parliament. “When Omtzigt was very high in the polls, it did not seem that the PVV would come close. And now this. I’m perplexed. This is a huge appreciation for all the work we have done. Geert has run a fantastic campaign. Flawless. It is clear that the Netherlands wants a different course.”
Reinder Blaauw, Groningen Member of Parliament who stands next to Geert Wilders at the party meeting in Scheveningen: “I was just on my way to Geert to shake his hand. It’s unprecedented. Bizarre. When the NOS said in the exit poll that the PVV was the big winner, I secretly hoped for thirty seats. But it seems to be 35. That made me very quiet at first, then the tears came. Since I started working for the PVV in Groningen ten years ago, I have sacrificed a lot. I have been vilified, denounced, verbally abused and denied jobs because I belonged to the PVV.”
“I just saw that I had missed sixty texts. One of the first was from a member of Parliament from GroenLinks in Groningen. She thinks it’s a shame that I’m leaving Groningen and congratulated me wholeheartedly. Very sporty, that’s how it should be and I would have done it the other way around. This is how we treat each other in the Groningen States, I hope it is a harbinger for the coming years in The Hague.”