The far right Freedom Party (PVV) of the Islamophobe and Eurosceptic Geert Wilders became the first force in the general elections in the Netherlands, the elections that will mark the withdrawal from power of the liberal Mark Rutte. The radical party doubled its results and will obtain 35 seats of the total of 150 in Parliament, according to exit polls by the Ipsos company.
In second position, with 26 seats, eight more than what it currently has, was the bloc between social democrats and greens led by the veteran former vice president of the European Commission Frans Timmermansthe only formation among the parties with options to lead the future government that ruled out Wilders as a partner.
According to these polls, broadcast at the closing of schools on public television, Rutte’s liberals, now led by the Minister of Justice Dilan Yesilgöz, sink into third position with 24 places, losing ten places compared to what they had. The new leader of the until now dominant party, with Turkish roots and defender of a tough line against migration, she was fighting to become the first woman at the head of a Dutch government.
“The voter has spoken. There is a clear mandate and I think we must overcome differences,” said Wilders, speaking on television, after making it clear that his purpose now is to lead the next government.
The turn in favor of the far-right occurs months after the collapse of what was the last coalition led by Rutte, precisely due to dissonances around immigration policy. The outgoing prime minister announced his retirement in July, after 13 years at the head of successive governments and having represented, at European and Dutch level, a line of extreme fiscal austerity.
Wilders, from Rutte’s ally to rival
The rise now of the extreme right of Wilders, a politician threatened inside and outside his country for his furious Islamophobia, has some personal revenge for this extreme right leader, 60 years old and founder of an almost one-man party. Rutte had the PVV as an ally during his first two years as head of government, but that collaboration collapsed. From then on, both politicians engaged in a kind of personal struggle for first place, to which was added the veto until now maintained by Rutte against his former ally for future coalitions.
The polls had for weeks pointed to a fight for first place between three forces: the liberals of Yesilgöz, the new centrist party called NSC and led by deputy Pieter Omtzigt, as well as the Timmermans bloc.
In the last section, Wilders’ chances of becoming the first force rose powerfully, whom Timmermans only explicitly ruled out as an ally, while Yesilgöz had withdrawn his veto.
Radical fragmentation and consolidation
The great fragmentation of the Dutch vote opens the possibility of multiple coalitions, since presumably whoever leads the new government will need up to four partners. There were 26 parties in the running, of which 14 already had seats in the Parliament in The Hague. It took Rutte 271 days to form his last government, an alliance between four centrist parties.
Wilders’ PVV, founded in 2006, is a fully consolidated party on the Dutch political scene, with a clear Islamophobic line, although in this campaign it had moderated the tone a bit. He thus admitted that among the current priorities is not the ban on mosques, despite the fact that it continues to maintain that programmatic objective. The immediate thing, he said, is to stop what he calls “the tsunami of asylum seekers.” He somewhat reoriented his discourse towards more pragmatic postulates, determined to leave the opposition and demonstrate his ability to assume government responsibilities.
Migration policy was the dominant issue in the electoral campaign of the Netherlands, an EU partner with high levels of well-being, but where rising housing costs are a growing concern among its 17 million inhabitants.
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Among all its political formations, those in favor of restricting the arrival of irregular immigrants and asylum seekers dominate. This was the common denominator during the electoral campaign between the center and right-wing parties, with very similar recipes. The dissolution of Rutte’s last center-right coalition arose precisely from disagreements over the strong limitations on family reunification for asylum seekers.
The extreme liberalism practiced by Rutte, at the level of the European Union (EU) and also internally, seems to have come to a dead end. In parallel, the new center of Omtzigt emerged, who out of nowhere managed to consolidate itself as a force to be taken into account, fueled by social discontent and the successive misfortunes that occurred in the last years of Rutte’s leadership – among them, the cuts to aid to the family that affected some 25,000 homes due to administrative errors.