Six prominent members of JA21 canceled their membership of the party on Saturday out of dissatisfaction with Annabel Nanninga, who has applied for a place on the electoral list for the upcoming parliamentary elections. In a letter the six, including MEPs Rob Roos and Rob Rooken, write to the party board that Nanninga and the board have turned against the general meeting of members, which in May spoke in favor of democratization within the party. Roos and Rooken retain their seats in the European Parliament.
The six resigning members write to the board that with Nanninga’s announcement that they want to enter the House of Representatives they are faced with a fait accompli. According to the letter writers, Nanninga comes in second place on the list of candidates. Nanninga made her announcement on Friday in the NPO Radio 1 program Steven on 1.
The fact that that interview was shared through JA21’s social media channels shows, according to the signatories, “that the board encourages rather than corrects its personal job carousel.” They conclude: “The party leadership is above the rules” and “the democratization and professionalization of the party is failed”.
Read also: Quarrel within JA21: ‘The party is a job machine for Joost and Annabel’
‘Rancorous types’
The departing members, including former Members of Parliament Johan Almekinders and Gert-Jan Ransijn, Wouter Weyers and Ted Dinklo, also accuse Nanninga of being “derogatory” about colleagues within the party in the radio interview. Nanninga said, among other things, that in the party there are “types [zijn] who are more resentful in the game”. Nanninga is one of the founders of JA21 and is also a member of the Senate and the Amsterdam city council.
The board of JA21 repents in a first short response about “a new course, based on science” that the party started when it was founded two and a half years ago, after the departure of Joost Eerdmans and Annabel Nanninga from FVD. The board writes that it proved impossible for “some politicians to jointly propagate this course”. After that, according to the board, talks were started with “the request whether these politicians would like to leave the party. These politicians have now responded to this themselves.”
It has been rumbling within JA21 for some time. In March, several members expressed their concerns about the democratic content of the party in a letter to the party board. Among them were Nicki Pouw-Verweij and Derk Jan Eppink, both MPs in the three-man fraction led by Joost Eerdmans. Pouw-Verweij and Eppink previously announced that they would not be eligible for re-election for JA21.
This article is also part of our live blog: Six prominent JA21 members cancel their membership out of dissatisfaction with Annabel Nanninga’s candidacy