Good luck to whoever has to form the new Dutch government
As you may have noticed with me writing about it before, I try to keep up with Dutch politics. I know politics is not the most exciting thing out there, but the decisions those people make have an impact on our everyday life. That’s the main reason I keep up and go out and vote and last wednesday wasn’t an exception. The results of the elections made a few things clear: 1) there was a vast shift from the middle to the right or left (former a bit more) and 2) forming a coalition will be one heck of a challenge.
Our 2e kamer (house of representatives comes closest to explain its function) has 150 seats so in order to create a ruling coalition you have to get 76 seats. When we look at the results after wednesday I see 3 possible coalitions:
- VVD (31) + PVV (24) + CDA (21): total of 76 (most likely)
- VVD (31) + PVDA (30) + D66 (10) + GroenLinks (10): total of 81 (probably not)
- VVD (31) + PVDA (30) + CDA (21) : total of 82 (not going to happen)
I think the dark horse in all of this is the CDA who, before the elections, were the biggest party but lost 20 seats. This meant that (now former) prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende took his political responsibility and stepped down as leader of the party and member of the 2e kamer. This defeat (lowest total of seats ever) is a gigantic blow for the party and it remains to be seen if they’re still willing to govern or if they’ll take to the opposition and try to rebuild from there. If they do the latter things will be even more interesting.
As is custom in Dutch politics someone will be appointed (a so called “formateur”) by the queen to start negotiations with the political parties in order to form a government. As said before this will be quite the challenge and I would like to wish him or her good luck. He/she will need it.
Tags: Viewpoint
