Klaas Kwint (66), a VVD member from Alphen aan den Rijn, stands at the microphone and looks at Mark Rutte. His voice trembles. “Stand up for your own people, man.” Rutte is among other VVD members at his party’s congress in Apeldoorn on Saturday afternoon. He says something back, but no one can understand him. Neither does Klaas Kwint. But they don’t want to hear it either. “No,” he calls to Rutte. “Nothing you.”
The party leadership knew it would happen. At this conference you would see the anger among VVD members about the large numbers of asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands, and about the lack of plans in the Rutte IV cabinet to do something about it. In the autumn, when a vote was taken at a VVD congress on the distribution law of ‘own’ Secretary of State Eric van der Burg, the party top had done everything they could to prevent a no to that law: party prominents had been summoned to the microphone to plead for a yes.
This time the VVD let it come as it came. In the negotiations, especially with D66 and the ChristenUnie, about cabinet plans to limit migration, it will almost certainly only help the VVD if as many members as possible are excited and angry. Look at our voters, Rutte can say: they will no longer accept it.
You stand up for your own people, man
Ministers on vacation
Contrary to custom, Rutte had not prepared his own speech, neither did party chairman Sophie Hermans. Instead, they let the VVD speak at the microphone, and they responded. One party member after another, Rutte pointed to his promise in the autumn that the arrival of asylum seekers would be “substantially” limited. That is why, many VVD members thought, they would have liked the fact that the distribution law was introduced, which could force municipalities to take in asylum seekers. When a VVD member said that Rutte had done absolutely nothing to keep his promise, he reacted fiercely. “I will not let that go over my head.”
Rutte started about his travels through Europe, about the talks in the cabinet and he said that Rutte IV will come up with measures before the summer recess. Sophie Hermans promised that too. “Our ministers involved,” she said, “are not allowed to go on vacation until it is done.” At the back of the room, State Secretary Van der Burg told his assistant that they could therefore stay in July, only the ministers had to stay.
Due to the deadline that the VVD is imposing on itself and the other government parties, the pressure on the – already shaky – cabinet is increasing. The CDA also wants to renegotiate the nitrogen plans before the summer. Those involved realize that it can be risky to let it all come down to the last weeks before the summer, when not only the pressure, but also the fatigue among the politicians increases. “You never stumble over a wall,” it sounds in Rutte IV. You trip over a threshold.”
It also doesn’t fit with the tactic that Rutte has been using for a long time: let time do its work, don’t impose a deadline on yourself if you don’t really have to. But apparently he thinks there is no other way this time. In Apeldoorn he said that “support” for the reception of asylum seekers is at stake. “And that support is important for what I want. That we treat refugees properly.”
‘Going to extremes’
Rutte seemed to have little to do with the idea that the VVD had better leave the cabinet. “As the largest party in the Netherlands, and in a few days we will have been thirteen years old, we have a responsibility to go to the utmost for the stability of the Netherlands. Especially now that there is war in Europe. In Europe, they also look to the Netherlands for leadership.”
He said he thought the cabinet would work it out. But if there was no other way, he also said, then it had to be, such a crisis. “Something has to be done against the influx.”
A few kilometers away, also in Apeldoorn and also on Saturday, the ChristenUnie met for a congress. CU leader Mirjam Bikker told journalists there on Saturday morning that, in her opinion, the Netherlands can “support the arrival of 70,000 asylum seekers per year well at the moment, as a rich country”. Only when such numbers came for years, things were different, she thought. She also said that she saw nothing in “ideas with a high páts content” such as the cancellation of the UN refugee treaty, which VVD member Henk Kamp had suggested. Mirjam Bikker said a few times how important it was to “help people in need” and “to continue to see the person behind the refugee”. That in particular made VVD members in Apeldoorn angry. As if they didn’t, said one of them at the microphone. Ruth nodded. But he thought that his party members should not respond “to that other congress”.
To Surinam
The VVD members also had enough of themselves. Not all members felt they could express their anger as they had intended. In the half hour that Hermans had set aside for their questions, the members at the microphone were told that they could sit down: the microphone would reach them. But that didn’t happen. A VVD member from Amstelveen who did stay at the microphone, was given the opportunity to come up with an idea that she herself called ‘out of the box’: ‘Why don’t we send the migrants to Suriname? There is plenty of room there, and the people there also speak Dutch.” There was laughter in the room, but no one took it seriously.
It became completely silent when it was about VVD minister Dennis Wiersma in Apeldoorn, and his outbursts of anger against employees. A former Member of Parliament, André Bosman, asked at the microphone about social safety in the VVD: was there enough attention for that? Wiersma himself then came forward to say “sorry”. The news about him, he said, also had an “radiance” on the party. And he said: “I have learned my lesson. It won’t happen again.”
NRC wrote about the tantrums of minister Wiersma. Read that article here: The tantrums of Minister Wiersma are not an incident but a pattern