The Jetten minority cabinet would rather no longer cooperate with ex-PVV member Gidi Markuszower, who last week called for “maximum violence” against Palestinian asylum seekers. But don’t rule it out completely either. Prime Minister Rob Jetten of D66 said this late on Tuesday evening in a debate in the House of Representatives about the violence during protests against asylum reception, and about the ‘normalization’ of that violence by politicians. Jetten puts it rather complicatedly. Markuszower, he believes, has placed himself “outside the constructive forces in which that cooperation takes place.” And on his tour of other faction leaders, Jetten had noticed that there are “sufficient constructive forces” in the House of Representatives when it comes to “the big issues”. So it is not necessary.
Markuszower thinks it is a difficult message. He had just left the PVV in January, together with six other MPs, because, unlike Geert Wilders, he wanted to work with the cabinet. He immediately stands at the interruption microphone. The Prime Minister, he says and it sounds almost pleading, had not heard what he had meant with his “perhaps somewhat clumsy words”? And what else had he said about it later? That only the government may use force, that it had to be “proportionate” and fit in with the Netherlands?
Jetten reacts measuredly: yes, he had heard “nuances”. But he doesn’t know, he says, whether that’s the end of the matter. “It’s also about whether you think violence is justified in these types of situations and I just don’t think so. Period.”
Markuszower sits down again, but then sees from his bench that Jetten is not completely putting him aside. He refuses to tell the party leaders of Volt, Progressive Netherlands, SP, Denk and the Party for the Animals that cooperation with the faction of the ex-PVV members is no longer possible. Jetten believes, he says, that parties in the House of Representatives should all work together.
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Earlier in the evening, the faction leaders of the three coalition parties, D66 member Jan Paternotte, Ruben Brekelmans of the VVD and CDA leader Henri Bontenbal, said that they do not intend to work “structurally” with Markuszower to gain a majority in the House of Representatives. They are not yet doing that with other parties and, they say, there are no plans for that yet. But furthermore: they have examples at hand of parties such as Progressive Netherlands and the Party for the Animals that have submitted motions together with the PVV. Was that so wrong?
Frog jumps in the hallway
Gidi Markuszower often walks to the interruption microphone during the debate. He makes a nervous, but not humble impression: he finds it strange that VVD member Brekelmans expects him to provide even more explanations and nuances to his “offending” words. “As far as I know, Mr Brekelmans is not my spokesperson.” During the dinner break, in an almost empty corridor, Markuszower makes big leaps. “Because I sit all the time,” he says later NRC. “And maybe it will also make me calm down a bit.”
According to Markuszower, there is “professional contact” between his faction and the Jetten cabinet. Already in February, to the enormous irritation of the other opposition parties, the cabinet had secretly concluded a deal with the SGP and the Markuszower Group about cuts to the state pension, which the cabinet was far from willing to give up at the time. According to the SGP and Markuszower, the plan went “back to the drawing board”. Yet Jetten had not yet visited Markuszower during his coffee tour of group leaders. That no longer seems to be an option: Jetten, he says at the end of the evening, has no objection to Jesse Klaver’s motion calling on the cabinet not to “conclude agreements” with “parties that call for violence.”
Klaver also mentions in his motion “parties that have spread the repopulation theories” and by that he means Forum for Democracy. The debate about that party is going on for a very long time. FVD, now with seven seats in the House of Representatives, has already more than doubled in polls. And the time when FVD was mainly ignored in debates is over.
FVD leader Lidewij de Vos talks in the audience about the protests at the asylum seekers’ centers, which she says are “peaceful”, “except for a few outliers”. She thinks it’s logical that people are angry and worried. “If we look around us, Dutch society is literally being repopulated and people don’t want that.” She mentions the “remigration” that her party wants to encourage. “We would like to keep the Netherlands Dutch.” According to De Vos, the current and recent government parties are, through their asylum policy, “responsible” for “the violence” that comes from asylum seekers themselves, she calls “rapes” and “murders”.
‘I, Lidewij de Vos’
Jesse Klaver starts about the intelligence services that warn that words such as “remigration” and the racist depopulation theory threaten security in the Netherlands. He wants to know from her whether she finds the extreme right-wing organization Voorpost dangerous. But De Vos does not want to give “any reviews”. This is also the case with VVD member Brekelmans who asks what she thinks about the controversial Prinsenvlag, and with Jimmy Dijk of the SP who wants to know what the FVD believes should be done against extreme right-wing groups. “A vague question,” says De Vos. “Because what are those groups and what have they been up to? People who do something that does not fall within the boundaries of the law must be tackled.”
Ex-BBB member Mona Keijzer tries “as two right-wing politicians together, who take people’s concerns seriously.” According to Keijzer, FVD has “a history of anti-Semitic apps and people who are on lists with whom you would rather not associate.” “It would sometimes be good to say: ‘No, I, Lidewij de Vos, the leader of the FVD, I also find that objectionable.”
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It irritates De Vos. “I want to make the point about the violence that results from the violence of asylum seekers.” She doesn’t feel like going into it. CDA member Bontenbal says that he can “have it just fine” if parties grow in the polls. “But if there is a party here that has ties to the extreme right, then I find that dangerous.” De Vos believes that she has already said “more than enough” about it. She refers him to interviews with her, to the FVD program, she becomes more and more excited. According to her, Bontenbal is trying to put FVD “in the suspect’s corner”. “So that he does not have to answer for the rapes and murders that I just listed and the fact that asylum seekers are over-represented in the violence…”
Bontenball becomes furious. De Vos says that she “means the policy of Mr Bontenbal and the coalition”, but Bontenbal does not seem to hear it: “In Rotterdam style: how gross, how gross do you want it to be? Look in the mirror, see if you still have a moral compass.”
It goes on like this for a while. De Vos receives questions from one after another about who she thinks is “Dutch”, she says that these are “people who originally come from here”. That people who feel “not Dutch” because they feel “more related to the country where their grandfather or great-grandfather comes from” should go to that country.
And then Keijzer comes forward again. She wants to know: “Does Mrs. De Vos think that the Netherlands is for white Dutch people?” De Vos says: “What does Mrs. Keijzer want?” The audience cheers: “An answer!” Keijzer also asks: “Does Mrs. De Vos think that the Jews are looking for a different composition of the population? Because if that is the case, it is time for her to admit it.” De Vos says she is “astonished”. “Then say no,” Keijzer calls outside the microphone. “I won’t let you dictate anything to me,” says De Vos.
After an hour and twenty minutes, De Vos sits back down on her bench. FVD member Pepijn van Houwelingen leans over: “Great job.”
