LIVEBLOG: 2011 Provincial Elections

Good morning from Australia, where it passed 7:30am a few minutes ago. It is just past 21:30 in the Netherlands; the polls closed half-an-hour ago. All times from now on are Dutch local time, which is GMT +1.

Exit polls are predicting the following:

CDA: 13.6% (- 11.4)
VVD: 20.0% (+ 1.9)
PvdA: 17.5% (- 0.4)
PVV: 11.8% (+ 11.8)
SP: 10.7% (- 4.1)
D66: 8.0% (+ 5.4)
GL: 6.4% (+ 0.3)
CU/SGP: 6.0% (- 2.8)
PvdD: 1.9% (- 0.5)
Others: 1.3% (- 3.0)

I’ll work these percentages out in seats soon, or maybe I’ll just wait for Dutch television to do it for me!

21:38 – One result is already in – the small island of Vlieland north of Friesland. It doesn’t entirely match up with the predicted trend, as the PvdA has gained a few percent there. The prediction for the “Others” category includes the regional parties under the OSF (Independent Senate Group). If they’ve really lost that much of the vote, their seat could be in trouble.

Provincial / Senate Elections this Wednesday

Provincial elections, held every four years, usually attract the least interest and therefore lowest turnout out of the three levels of government in the Netherlands. Provincial parliaments are said to have less power than councils, and certainly less than the national government. No “states rights” or the like here. However, provincial MPs have a very important task to carry out not long after their election: the election of the Eerste Kamer (Senate). The Senate has 75 members, and at the 2007 elections there were 564 members of the provincial parliaments. This was a reduction from 764 in the 2003 elections, increasing the threshold needed to win a seat.

The Scene Since September

This post is a few months late, so there’s quite a bit to catch up on. Hence, I’ll summarise as much as possible, and maybe one day I can post about events as they happen. To recap my last post: negotiations between VVD, CDA and PVV had just collapsed when Ab Klink, former CDA minister and key coalition negotiator, wrote a letter to CDA parliamentary leader Maxime Verhagen, and party chairperson Henk Bleker, declaring that he could no longer take part in any negotiations with the PVV due to his opposition to such an outcome. When the letter became public it became clear that two other CDA MPs, Kathleen Ferrier and Ad Koppejan, backed Klink’s position. The PVV withdrew from negotiations at this point.

Only a few days (7 September) after the PVV withdrew from negotiations with VVD and CDA, Klink resigned from parliament. The circumstances surrounding this decision suggest that he was under a lot of pressure from party colleagues to change his tune or leave. With Klink out of the way, the PVV indicated its willingness to enter talks again. The CDA MPs met behind closed doors and agreed to continue negotiations, keeping in mind that a special congress of CDA members could still veto any coalition agreement.

Stating the obvious: site on hiatus

Hello to my small group of readers! While there is a lot to say about recent events in Dutch politics, not least that there is finally a new government, I won’t be posting about it for at least a few more weeks. I am running as a candidate for the Greens in the Victorian state elections, which will be held on Saturday 27 November (before anyone asks, my chances of winning are incredibly small). Once that’s done, I should be able to pay more attention to hobbies such as this blog, so see you all in December.

- Justin-Paul

7. The Liberal Parties

While there is a case to say that the two parties I’ve put in the category “liberal” could have been placed in another, I think it’s important distinction to make. As such, liberalism is a key feature of Dutch society, where an emphasis on tolerance and freedom has long been the norm — only in the recent decade has this image begun to waver and fray around the edges. The two liberal parties — the VVD and D66, represent two variants of traditional liberalism in terms of personal and economic freedom. The VVD has a more right-wing streak, whereas D66 is more to the left, but both sit in the same group in the European parliament (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe).

VVD / PVV / CDA coalition negotiations collapse

I haven’t posted here for a while for a couple of reasons: firstly, we’ve just had a federal election in Australia, and my focus naturally shifted to that, and secondly, the negotiations between VVD, Geert Wilders’ PVV and the CDA were looking promising in terms of reaching an agreement, so I figured I might as well wait until the announcement of the new government before posting again.

Of course, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. In previous posts, I pointed out that a number of CDA leaders and ‘prominents’ as they’re called in the Netherlands were openly opposed to working with Geert Wilders and his band of followers. This unrest continued to build in the lead-up to a special congress of the CDA membership where the proposal to work with the PVV in government would be put to a vote. Turns out that congress won’t be necessary, because Wilders has withdrawn from negotiations.

The final straw for Wilders seems to have been the letter sent by CDA negotiator and MP Ab Klink. In this letter, he stated he refused to take part in any further negotiations with Wilders and did not promise his support in parliament for a government with the PVV in it. Additionally, it appeared that he was not alone in this — another two CDA MPs have indicated their agreement with this stance. What this means is that the VVD/PVV/CDA coalition, which would have had the barest of majorities of 76 seats in the Tweede Kamer, now has only 73 guaranteed votes. It is worth noting here that the three CDA dissidents haven’t ruled out taking part in such a right-wing coalition, merely that their support could not be taken for granted.

VVD leader Mark Rutte has decided that his next step will be to write a governing accord by himself, and then see which parties will sign-on. How successful this attempt will be depends entirely on whether Rutte writes an accord which simply is a list of VVD policies, or whether he makes a genuine attempt to put something to paper which will be feasible for a number of parties. I would imagine that if Rutte fails in this attempt, the baton of coalition-forming may well be passed on to Job Cohen as leader of the second-largest party. If he fails as well, there could be new elections early next year.

Oh, and before I sign off, a special note to Australian readers worried about the situation back home: chill, okay? It’s only been two weeks since our elections, and it looks like we’ll have a government within a few days. The Dutch have been at it since June and it doesn’t look like it’ll resolve any time soon. Meanwhile, the economy hasn’t collapsed, and there haven’t been riots in the streets. Hung parliaments are a good thing. They mean compromise and negotiation are the order of the day. In my opinion, the only party which has a right to govern alone is one that polls over 50% of the primary vote.

Paars Plus negotiations fail

The news from the Binnenhof (explanation here) is that the negotiations to form a Paars Plus (Purple Plus) cabinet featuring the VVD, PvdA, D66 and GL have collapsed, with the VVD and PvdA saying that there wasn’t any room for further compromise. D66 and GL have said they thought there was still some hope, but as they are smaller parties it isn’t really relevant — they will now be left behind as the VVD tries to find other combinations.

It looks as though one of the major stumbling blocks was cuts to the budget. While all parties agreed that significant cuts were necessary, the amount they were willing to cut varied: the PvdA didn’t want to go much above 10 billion euros; the VVD wanted 20 billion but was willing to drop to 18 billion at the very least, while D66 and GL were somewhere in between. Either way, this combination looks to be well beyond rescue.

What’s next? Well, the Queen has appointed Ruud Lubbers, CDA Prime Minister from 1982-1994 as the new informateur. Lubbers held brief talks with all the party leaders, and has decided to try to the VVD/PVV/CDA option again, which would have the smallest possible majority of 76. This was probably prompted by the PvdA’s continued refusal to consider a VVD/PvdA/CDA coalition.

This weekend, the CDA MPs will meet to discuss a VVD/PVV/CDA coalition. The party is, at best, very wary of working with Geert Wilders and there would be a lot of internal dissent if it did. However, there are few other options. My hunch is that there may be new elections by the year’s end if this right-wing coalition is unable to be formed.

There is one final option, but it would be a very unusual and controversial one: the VVD admits that it has failed to put together a governing coalition, and the opportunity to lead the next government falls to the PvdA, the second-largest party in parliament. The leader of the SP, Emile Roemer, has come up with an innovative proposal, now known as the “Roemer-variant”, whereby Job Cohen (PvdA leader) would be at the head of a PvdA/CDA/SP/GL coalition (76 seats). Roemer has written a 10-page document explaining what compromises would have to be made for such a coalition to be feasible. The major stumbling block here would be the distrust between the CDA and the PvdA after the collapse of Balkenende IV. However, with the main protagonists of that tussle now retired from politics (Balkenende and Bos), there may be an opportunity to reset relations. Even if this occurred, the CDA would no doubt be as wary of entering a government with three left-wing parties as the VVD was about Paars Plus. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive proposal, and Roemer has clearly put a lot of thought into this, so it should be on the table if the current round of negotiations fail.

I suspect these negotiations may continue for a while yet, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever coalition emerges (assuming fresh elections aren’t called) will be an unstable one, although in this climate I tend to think that it will be. Negotiations for the first Paars governing period took months and months, and yet the government lasted almost two full terms, which is very rare in Dutch politics.

To be continued (again) …

6. The Right-Wing Parties

Some people will tell you that the Netherlands doesn’t really have a (secular) conservative, right-wing party like they do in other parts of Europe and the world. In a sense, they have a point. In any case, there certainly is not a typical right-wing party that has a stable position in parliament. While some might point to the VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), I’d argue they belong to a different political tradition, which will be the topic of my next post, coincidentally my last post on the various political parties.

In any event, there is certainly at least one party which mostly deserves to be called “right-wing”, along with another two parties (one no longer in existence) which have similar backgrounds and ideas.

Update on Coalition Negotiations

My apologies for my absence; house-hunting and other changes in my life have pushed this down my priority list. I still have a number of posts on the various grouping of political parties and the political events of the last fifteen years to complete as well.

Anyway, I’ll kick this blog back into action with an update on how negotiations for a new coalition government in the Netherlands are going.

Once the final election results are known — these were announced within a week, and the seat totals didn’t change from my last update in the liveblog post — all the party leaders take turns in visiting the Queen for a cup of tea and brief discussion, where they advise her on what kind of coalition they think the results demand. This advice is usually fair and frank; a party which polled three seats and has radically different views to everyone else will not insist that they are placed front-and-centre in any coalition government. Most leaders acknowledged the strong gains made by the VVD and PVV, and indicated that a coalition including those two parties would seem to be the logical outcome.

Since then, here’s what’s happened:

* The VVD and PVV began talks, and indicated that they wished for the CDA to join them. Together the three parties had 76 seats, the smallest possible majority. However, the CDA insisted that it would not come to the negotiating table until the VVD and PVV had worked through their differences. This never really happened, so this coalition option was put aside quite quickly.

* VVD leader Mark Rutte said that his second option was a centrist VVD/CDA/PvdA coalition. This time PvdA leader Job Cohen threw a spanner in the works, insisting that he wanted a progressive coalition, and this combination did not fulfil this criteria.

* With great reluctance, the VVD began discussions with PvdA, D66 and GroenLinks on a “Purple-Plus” coalition. After a bit of a stop-start in negotiations, it looks as though the parties will indeed form the next governing coalition, which Greens leader Femke Halsema prefers to call “Purple-Green”. The governing agreement is going to lack the detail and rigidity of those of previous governments, in recognition of the fact that there are huge differences between the VVD and the other parties. Negotiations are in full swing, with compulsory breaks whenever the Dutch soccer team is playing a World Cup match(!)

To be continued …

Liveblog: 2010 Tweede Kamer Elections

Good morning everyone! (Well, it’s morning here – 5:30 to be precise.) I’ll be liveblogging the results as they come in — all times are Dutch local time.

You can follow the results online here.

03:40 - Okay, I’m signing off for now. Almost 97% of the votes have been counted, Mark Rutte has given a cautious but enthusiastic victory speech which I don’t think gave away any clues as to who he wants to govern with. Here are the last final results for the night:

VVD: 31
PvdA: 30
PVV: 24
CDA: 21
SP: 15
D66: 10
GL: 10
CU: 5
SGP: 2
PvdD: 2

So, for the first time in history, the Dutch PM will be a member of the VVD.

03:27 - Mark Rutte has returned to the VVD election party and is giving his victory speech. The PvdA party ended on a somber note with one of their MPs thanking everyone for all their work. Cohen did not return.

02:40 - With 88% counted, the VVD has pulled ahead. They are now at 31 seats, while the PvdA has lost a seat to PvdD (Animals) and is on 30 seats. VVD leader Mark Rutte is expected to declare victory soon.

02:35 – 86% counted, and the PVV has gained a seat (now 24) at the expense of D66 (now 10). I think the VVD has won this; they’re 44,000 votes in front, which is about two-thirds of a seat. Expat votes are still to be counted, and they usually favour the VVD. While Dutch TV is not calling it until all the votes are counted, it’s hard to see the PvdA coming back from this.