Taking on conventions to bring about change, that is the Fortuyn legacy
As we speak, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is taking America by storm and many commentators are struggling to explain her instant success following the publication of her recent biography. And in doing so they reconstruct her creative partnership with Dutch moviemaker Theo van Gogh, something that directly caused the latter's death and eventually forced Hirsi Ali to pursue a new career on this side of the ocean. Yet it would not be a stretch to argue that if it hadn't been for Pim Fortuyn - murdered five years ago today - that Van Gogh would still be alive and that Hirsi Ali would still be producing dull policy papers for the Dutch Labour party. Both however had a unique opportunity to opt for an uncharted course.
Every political rupture, every shift needs a change agent, a person brave enough to defy conventional thinking and embark on a mission that even if it fails will stand as a beacon for future disciples. Barry Goldwater rolled the dice and didn't quite make it, but Reagan in the end benefited from his trailblazing effort. And so it was in the placid, structured and overly politically correct Dutch world where concepts as success, ambition and renewal were relative unknowns or if they emerged, were met with deep resistance. And although Pim Fortuyn was to some extent part of the Dutch establishment, his ideas, style and tastes were a tad too rich and unconventional for the famed Dutch consensus. He was rebuked by all parties - from left to right - and he consequently started his own platform, without any constraints, something which probably suited him best. The struggle as a gay man that grew up in a Catholic household in the 1950s had probably given him the courage and raw individualism required to pull of a mission of this nature.
As Fortuyn saw it, provocation and a resulting 'hefty debate' were the essential tools to disrupt complacency and find alternative solutions to the challenges of a global and rudderless new century. Books like "Without Public Sector Employees" in a nation governed by pampered and firmly ensconced public servants and "Against the Islamization of our Culture" (in 1997, no less) in a country deeply committed to political correctness, were the opening shots of a much broader campaign.
While his key strengths were arguing about less government with more room for the private sector and curbing immigration into a nation that was "full", Fortuyn's passion and sharp debating skills were above all fueled by an intense dislike of the vested order. The establishment was his real target. Not only had it rebuffed him more than once, he was on an intellectual level able to demonstrate how vacuous it had become. This solidified his passion and support and it enabled him to draw followers from all layers of society. In a memorable debate the leader of the Labour Party pointed to the Dutch economic success story of the 1990s which had recorded unprecedented low unemployment figures. It was a classic and often convincing campaign argument, yet it was all Fortuyn needed to turn it around and make his point: "the government isn't in the business of employment, the market is. You're in charge of the public sector and that's where you've failed". In one stroke he had firmed up his popularity in the business world, but also among the less fortunate who could see that the public sector was no longer delivering adequate health and social services.
And yes, his momentum grew after 9/11, an event which former Dutch Labour prime minister Wim Kok acknowledged had blindsided everyone, apart from Fortuyn. Long before radical Islam was on the radar, Fortuyn had defined it, written a book about it and pointed to the need to confront it. This of course was his Achilles heel in a nation married to politically correct respect and institutional multiculturalism. No longer able to challenge Fortuyn's sound economic logic, his clarity and compelling style, his opponents set out to demonize him with a vengeance, encouraged by most established politicians who had come to realize and fear Fortuyn's potential at the ballot box. The media happily channeled the negative attitudes to Pim's growing political momentum and that helped create the fertile ground in which the killer could operate. While immigrants were not the centerpiece of his campaign, Fortuyn's enemies defined it in such a way that it was, and negatively so. No one could have expressed this lethal collusion of established players better than Fortuyn himself in this video, shot some six weeks before his death:
Translation:
FORTUYN: If you see what I get in my mailbox from time to time, in terms of threats and so on, that doesn't exactly cheer you up. And the Dutch Government, and this I think is a 'bloody shame', helps in creating a climate in which I am demonized. And if something were to happen to me - I am glad that you give me the opportunity to say this - if something were to happen to me, then they are responsible too. And then they can't just say, 'well, it wasn't us committing the attack', no, you have created the climate in which the attack took place and that has to stop.
INTERVIEWER: Because it is ...
PUBLIC: Applauds, one person boos
FORTUYN: (in response to the booing person and referring to being pied days earlier at his book launch): More pies? Bring them on!
His death devastated and angered many and it was Theo van Gogh who unofficially took over the role of politically incorrect firebrand. His fury over Fortuyn's assassination prompted him to take his commentary and verbal attacks to an unprecedented and, as it turned out, lethal level. The fractured political situation after the murder turned Hirsi Ali into a rare electoral asset that was quickly seized by the right of center free-market party. Despite the accomplishments and influence of both, they became one-issue derivatives who benefited from the new openness which was a direct result of Fortuyn's pioneering efforts.
When asked in an interview about death Fortuyn emphatically stated that you can influence the way in which you die and that most people more or less die the way they lived. Being shot in broad daylight shortly after another media appearance does indeed seem to reflect the controversies he caused while he was alive. His mother had presaged events almost four decades earlier shortly after JFK's death by informing the young Pim that he might one day die as tragically as his political hero. To Fortuyn, JFK represented change and hope and a journey out of what he perceived to be the overly conservative and uninspiring 1950s. In an ultimate twist of fate, he also became an icon for those that were hoping to make a break with decades of convention and politically correct orthodoxies.
Today, five years after his tragic death we need to remind ourselves once more that it takes unrefined individual nerve to challenge ingrained political and social beliefs. Pim's mission lives on and his unique legacy stands, in Europe and beyond.
This article originally appeared, under a different title, on Pajamas Media on April 3, 2007
Time To Get Out
The Dutch are leading the way in the new exodus from Europe
Setting up a farm in New Zealand? Start up a business in Tasmania or do you like to cash in on British Columbia's construction boom? All these options were presented at a real 'Emigration Fair' in Amsterdam earlier this month which drew record crowds. Whatever pessimism there is in and about Europe and no matter how commentators try to figure out if this exodus is real, the market has smelled the opportunity and knows how to respond. And as opposed to "Give me your tired, your poor" many jurisdictions in the new world have discovered that the disgruntled Dutch are anything but tired and poor. They're young, affluent, well-educated, entrepreneurial, fluent in English and smart enough to have figured that the time has come to get out as the future can no longer be found at home.
And yes, the numbers do corroborate this trend. In the first nine months of last year a record number of Dutch packed their bags with some 100,000 leaving the country, an increase of 12% on the previous year. For this year another increase is expected and, according to some research bureaus the overall attitudes about leaving are changing too. This year some 32% are seriously considering a move as opposed to 26% last year according to the 'Emigration Monitor'. What is even more revealing is that the 20 to 30 age group constitutes the largest group of leavers, a trend that got further momentum when one polling group figured out that about half of the nation's adolescents would, given the chance, prefer to pack up and go. Last year's number confirm that the Dutch are experiencing the largest net outflow of people since the post-war emigration boom of the 1950s and the remarkable attitude shifts will ensure that this trend will persist in the years to come.
Less reliable figures are being presented when it comes to determining why so many feel it is time to vote with their feet. A random survey of the recent news reports makes it clear that in terms of negatives the Dutch basically got it all: high population density, an overregulated society, a significant tax burden, soaring crime rates, a general sense of 'dilapidation' and a huge unintegrated pool of Muslim immigrants. While they've had little influence over inheriting a relatively small plot of land, it is the vast expansion of a powerful and omnipresent public behemoth that appears to be at the root of most of the nation's current problems. And for its origins we probably have to go back to the sixties and seventies.
The rapid post-war economic expansion enabled the establishment of a well-funded bureaucracy that would over time be equipped with a set of tools to ensure what the predominant Left of those days would call the 'makeability of society'. At the same time the general social and cultural liberalization contributed to an unprecedented level of individualism, allowing citizens to do pretty much as they liked knowing that the government would always be there as some sort of guarantor of last resort. In other words, it doesn't matter what you do, someone will always be there to fix your problem. In practice that is exactly why the nation experiences so much vandalism and intentional damage to public property by hooligans and youngsters: they have long stopped to identify themselves with a community, public property is impersonal, and someone else will surely fix it. So who cares? Another great example is garbage disposal which is now so heavily regulated and expensive that many just dump their weekly dose of household leftovers along the highway: much cheaper. The more government interferes, the fewer citizens take responsibility, and the more decay you tend to see around you.
The bureaucracy at the same time has been without any of the tools required to maintain order in an increasingly rudderless society. The Dutch justice system is a case in point as one of the most lax on the entire planet, believing as it does - another 1960s legacy - that even the worst offenders should have a chance to re-enter society. In recent years many severely deranged offenders were able to escape from half-way houses where they were prepared for a return to society, a problem that remains unaddressed as of today. And not only maximum security felons were able to get a great deal and the opportunity to re-offend. Earlier this month Dutch press reported that since 2005 some 3,400 immigrant youths - notably Moroccans and Cape Verdians - had been treated to vacations back to their home countries to 'reconnect with their culture' in the bizarre hope that such a trip to the sunny south would minimize their chances to re-offend. Of course, the Dutch taxpayer has kindly footed the bill leaving some commentators to note that in America the holidaying offenders would probably have ended up on a chain gang.
So decay, crime, incompetent bureaucracies, unfettered and mismanaged immigration; didn't the Dutch opt for change in recent years? It is revealing that foreign media still mistakenly think that the recent political turmoil has turned the nation to the right and that the much vaunted Dutch pragmatism is once more delivering some clever solutions. Not really, and to some extent it hardly matters if a right or left of center cabinet is in charge. Powerful public servants wield the sort of power that allows them to continue to pursue a makeabilty of society that has long stopped to find takers among those Dutchmen that are able to look beyond the horizon.
And the opportunities are there for the taking as there is a New Europe in the east and north where low asset prices and space are available for those who do not want to venture far across the ocean. But many have discovered that what the Dutch have lost can still be found in the New World and if you pitch it to them in the right way as was done on the Emigration Fair, you might just get them.
It was a rainy New Year's day when I ambled onto our local beach for the traditional 'dip and dash'. Usually the event is hosted by the mayor, but this time there was our Member of Parliament, Liberal Blair Wilson. Of course, he was surrounded by a group of curious people and I could not resist mixing into the circle and get a feel for the discussion that was consuming them. Wilson was confident in reporting to the group around him that the days of Stephen Harper's conservative minority government were pretty much numbered. "Eighteen months, and that's about it" affirmed Wilson. All the bystanders reacted in the affirmative: "Right, eighteen months".
A bit too confident to my liking as the latest polls were showing that Canadians were (a) not very interested to head back to the polls anytime soon and (b) were giving the conservatives still the edge over the liberals. Sure, Wilson and friends have a good six months before the year-and-a-half mark is reached, so I asked him what it was that the Liberal Party of Canada planned to campaign on in order to ensure their return to the halls of power. To clarify my point I underlined that the last campaign was about the corruption of Wilson's own party so what could we possibly expect this time? "Childcare" was the confident answer from Wilson and the group started concurring again. My rebuttal was swift: "Many people with young children are quite happy with the monthly Harper check", pointing to the current government's attempt to let parents figure out how to care for their kids rather than create another state-owned behemoth. Childcare an issue? Sure, but it will not swing an election.
Wilson was not easily taken. "Afghanistan" he said stridently, "We'll see the same here as in the US last November, people are just tired of the war". It was not the place and time to take Wilson through the various reasons as to why the Democrats recaptured congress, but suffice it say that according to CNN's exit polls they were in order of importance: corruption, terrorism, the economy with the Iraq War only number four on the list. Still, the man representing the party that instinctively rejects anything American wasted no time to put Canadian voters in the same box as their southern neighbors, conveniently forgetting that it was his own party that sent troops to Afghanistan in the first place. Barring any disaster, not something the Liberals would really want to campaign on.
And Wilson must have sensed he was on feeble ground and quickly went on to the next issue that would move the Canadian vote: aboriginal or Indian issues. I don't think I needed to underline the folly of that particular item as the bystanders stopped nodding and now came to the rescue of our struggling parliamentarian: "The environment!". Wilson was relieved to get this lifeline, how could he possibly have forgotten the flavor of the month and the pet issue of his party's new leader, Stephane Dion? So, he started to celebrate the greening of his own party and to be frank, it has indeed become an issue for many: the marketing genius behind "An Inconvenient Truth" knows no boundaries.
Walking away and preparing for the dip in the ice cold Pacific Ocean I couldn't help but think that none of the issues that the Liberal party has prioritized are all that compelling. Harper has enacted an accountability act that will hopefully address corruption for generations to come, he is carefully but steadily forking cash back into Canadian households and his clear stance on foreign affairs is admired, prompting one of Wilson's own liberal colleagues, an immigrant Muslim no less, to join the conservative ranks. Afghanistan is not moving the nation and too hot to handle for the Liberals, childcare and aboriginal affairs are unlikely to get anyone seriously excited and Harper has in the meantime moved adroitly to regain control of the environmental portfolio.
The Liberals have routinely assumed power in Canada without ever offering a vision of the future and most of the times the electorate let them get away with this without much ado. That has bred the sort of complacency that forms the basis of the party's lack of a strategy and its inability to articulate clear and compelling issues. The result is simply hoping that the conservatives will somehow trip and that Canadians will wake up realizing they had been foolish to hand Harper a mandate. This attitude is not a strictly Canadian phenomenon; it is an ideological void that the liberal-left has run into in many other countries: it has lost the debate over the economy and fiscal policies, it has failed to grasp security and terror and multiculturalism is just too toxic to touch these days. So, on the wings of Al Gore it has embraced global warming as one of the last big issues alive.
As of today Stephen Harper has shown unusual strength in offering up new ideas and against all expectations, has mastered the political part of the game. Only the faint hope of an unforeseen disaster can bring the liberals back to power, hardly something to build your electoral strategy on. Harper will as it stands today last far longer than anyone, friend or foe, had expected.
To be frank, I was out of the freezing water in less than ten seconds, and a gracious Wilson, ever the politician, walked up to me and shook my hand. And in that he revealed what his party has always been very good at: politics, not ideas.
Today it is exactly two years ago that America went to the polls to decide the outcome of the electoral battle between George Bush and John Kerry. While America woke up to cast its ballots, Dutch police were cleaning up the crime scene where moviemaker and columnist Theo van Gogh had been murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist, Mohammed Bouyeri. The nation that had been thrown into political uncertainty following the murder of Pim Fortuyn two years earlier, was now plunged in a state of despair and utter confusion. Their deepest fears had materialized: the conflict that had for years been smothered under the blanket of politically correct live and let live attitudes had erupted bloodily on its streets, in broad daylight.
What was most striking was the total ineptness with which politicians sought to quell the unrest and the state of anxiety that had taken hold of the small nation. The vice-premier appeared to be addressing the nation's fears accurately by stating that jihad had come to the Dutch streets, but the prime-minister took a far more cautious approach as did Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen. Together with the Queen the latter visited a Moroccan youth center to express the nation's sympathy for a minority that now would surely be embattled. It was seen by many as an odd and inappropriate gesture at a time when even the leader of the Green Left party had called for a sign from the royal family to unify the nation. But none was really forthcoming, other than a concerned statement from the Queen herself long after the fact that the nation 'had experienced a political murder'. But even in those no doubt carefully crafted words the signs of ignorance were overly clear: it was a religious murder your majesty, not a political one.
As much as the Dutch establishment struggled with a jihadist silencing one of its nation's foremost cultural icons, its Muslim immigrants were equally confused in finding the right tone. The time had come for the moderates among them to stake their ground and prove their allegiance to their host nation. Ahmed Aboutaleb, a devout Muslim and member of the Labor Party and deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, was daring enough to read his fellow Moroccans the riot act. The time had come for them to start playing by the rules or 'else pack up and go home', which in a nutshell is what he told his audience in a local mosque. Aboutaleb's attempt to build a bridge between the native Dutch and Muslim immigrants, however well intentioned, didn't work all that well. Native Dutch looked at him with a measure of suspicion while his fellow Moroccans mostly treated him with scorn, if they had never seen traitor, now they had seen one. To this day Ahmed Aboutaleb has round the clock security.
Dutch pragmatism forced the nation to move on, but it seemed that Van Gogh's murder never contributed to a broad consensus on how to exactly do that. That was not helped by the fact that the main protagonists of the immigration debate were slowly but steadily disappearing from the scene. The elder statesman of the Dutch right, Frits Bolkestein had retired, Pim Fortuyn, the man who made the discussion palatable was dead and now the intellectual heir of challenging political hypocrisy and radical Islam, Theo van Gogh, was dead too. The book it seemed was finally closed when Ayaan Hirsi Ali was driven out of her house - the security levels were too much to bear for her neighbors who sued and found a willing ear at the courts - and forced her to leave the nation when the only other remaining star on the right, Rita Verdonk, thought there were political points to be had in disgracing her fellow party member from Somalia. The irony was that it was the incompetent way in which the Hirsi Ali affair was handled that forced the resignation of the government and thus new elections, scheduled for later this month.
The ensuing campaign so far has been mysteriously quiet on immigration or Muslim issues. Their explosive nature had not only destroyed a few political careers, it had literally been a deadly topic for its main initiators. So with good economic news and a renewed sense of that age old Dutch expediency, an election campaign emerged that was devoid of any real controversy or explosiveness. Rebuilding the national consensus that everything was fine proved to be a viable approach to get to the ballot box, or did it?
Nickel and diming retirement benefits may be safer ground to build your campaign on, however it be became apparent soon that these issues did not result in the desired movements of large voting blocks. It was Ahmed Aboutaleb, part of the Labour campaign, who boldly decided to resuscitate Theo van Gogh and use him as a swipe against the right, and more particular against the already bruised Verdonk. The latter had appeared in Amsterdam immediately after Van Gogh's murder and Aboutaleb argued that her visit had been one out of sheer political expediency. Well, the facts were different and Aboutaleb was forced to publicly apologize, a fairly humiliating experience for both himself and his party. But as Labour is losing ground it decided, unfazed, by forcing a motion in parliament two weeks ago to ask the government to investigate why Mohamed Bouyeri - who was already on the radar screen of the Dutch security services well before the Van Gogh murder - was not tracked more efficiently and, not taken into custody. A peculiar move, two years after the murder, for a party that had never shown any real interest in either Van Gogh or his views.
Theo himself no doubt, would be disgusted to learn that the Left had decided to dig up his legacy and repurpose it for its own electoral benefits. Yet, at the same time he would be bemused and laugh at the clumsiness with which his fellow countrymen tried to streamline the debate of which he was one of the initiators. He once lamented in one of his columns that fools 'have essentially taken over this country'. Well Theo, you can rest assured: they're still here.
How political expediency has replaced political correctness in the Netherlands
When Ayaan Hirsi Ali published her autobiography, entitled "My Freedom", last week she commented that immigration and integration issues in The Netherlands were far from being solved; that more confrontations by opposing sides in the debate were likely. It is therefore remarkable that the key players in the Dutch election campaign so far have stayed away from this particular hot button and focused on more mundane issues such as universal childcare and retirement benefits.
There are a number of possible reasons for this. One is that those that have initiated that particular debate are either dead (van Gogh, Fortuyn) or have left the country (Hirsi Ali herself). Their political heirs have not exactly been able to grab the limelight and if they did, it was often too controversial (Verdonk, Wilders). Other explanations are that the voters have opted for a more pragmatic "let's ignore it for now" approach, a position gladly mirrored by many Dutch politicians.
Nevertheless, the Dutch tension over immigration and integration remains palpable and it takes very little to let it erupt. A few weeks ago, Justice Minister Donner - known for his overly legalistic approach to most issues - said in an interview that if two-thirds of the Dutch population would support it, the Dutch constitution would have to be amended in order to introduce Sharia law. The immediate broad public outburst over the minister's remarks was, given their factual and legal basis in the principle of majority rule, surprising.
Nobody seemed to realize that when Donner was talking about a nation that opted for abandoning liberal democracy in favor of implementing Sharia it was one that would likely be very different from the one that the Dutch inhabit today. Donner's scenario was thus highly speculative and even if it were to come to fruition, would, to use Mark Steyn's estimate, not occur until the year 2050.
Even then the demographic projections of today would have to materialize, and we would have to assume that all Muslim immigrants in the lowlands would remain unintegrated, rejecting all the great things that a free democracy had to offer. So, Donner's theoretical approach should have given commentators some pause and most could have argued, "Well, the man is technically right, but we will have to ask ourselves if we should get all that excited about it today?" But that didn't happen.
Donner more than anyone - he was, after all, the man ultimately in charge of the prosecution of Van Gogh's killer and the jihadist Hofstad Group - should have realized how sensitive an issue like this is. In retrospect he should have qualified his statements to some extent. Still, the reactions to his statement revealed once more that the raw emotions over Islam run very deep in the Netherlands. They show that no matter how excellent the budget surpluses and tax reductions, the Dutch people remain, at the end of the day, deeply fearful over a future nation where Sharia law may indeed start to play a significant role in Dutch life. A good example of this occurred last week when a project developer in the city of Rotterdam launched a plan to build an Islamic hospital where men and women - staff and patients - would be strictly separated. It did not exactly receive a warm round of applause and caused some to dust off that long forgotten word of 'apartheid'.
What is even more interesting is the debate that ensued over the boundaries of voting in free democracies. If a situation could arise where a majority could agree to shred a constitution in favor of religious law - and one from the Middle Ages at that - than doesn't a democracy have an obligation to devise mechanism whereby such choices could be neutralized?
A democracy, it was argued by some, needs teeth, even if that means that democratic choices could somehow - a clear mechanism was of course never offered - be rejected. It was both interesting and surprising to see the nation's eminent historian, H.W. von der Dunk, float the idea of a 'qualified democracy' where citizens would have to pass a certain test before they could be eligible to vote. It would keep the easily influenced masses out of the voting booth and, so the argument goes, it would leave some wiser men and women in charge of the decisions that affect a society. Whatever the merits, it was for the Dutch to talk about extra-democratic measures to protect democracy. This discussion was unhead of until very recently and quite possibly something that will remain on the radar screen for as long as the prospect of Sharia law or more jihadist terror remains present.
Donner in the meantime has resigned, not over his Sharia commentary, but over his political responsibility for a fire on Amsterdam's Schiphol airport that killed eleven people, most illegal immigrants, in a cell block where fire regulations had been sloppy. His controversial remarks however have once more revealed the very deep unease and to some extent the cluelessness that continues to haunt Dutch society when it comes to the far reaching consequences of integrating a different culture into their own.
The fact that the storm over Donner's comments died down as quickly as it started either reflects their highly theoretical nature or the far reaching implications they have for defining the Dutch democracy of tomorrow. It is probably a combination of both, but I am tilting towards the latter.
When the times are relatively good, there usually is little appetite for politicians to wade into these unpredictable waters. It can turn against you, and in the Europe of today it could even kill you. No, it is not the now largely defunct political correctness that is covering up the debate over religion, culture and integration. It is political expediency. The price of which, as always, will have to be paid further down the road.
Or how an opportunity to effect change is being squandered
It was in the beginning of this year that The New Republic jumped on the bandwagon of classifying everything that happened in The Netherlands since the Fortuyn and Van Gogh murders as solid evidence of the small nation abandoning its left-liberal tolerance and 'turning right'.
There were many other articles in the international media that suggested that the Dutch had lost their appetite for good old fashioned left-of-center political correctness and were voting en groupe for neo-con inspired change in the wake of failed integration policies. It was a pity that no one bothered to look at the polls and notice how the fragile right-of-center coalition was pounded by a clueless and hard to please electorate, ready to vote for a return to the good old days.
Well, they will have that chance three months from now. The current administration had to hand in its mandate following its disastrous handling of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali affair. Ali, the newest addition to the American Enterprise Institute's team of scholars, was cruelly offered up for political expediency by her fellow party member and hardline immigration minister Rita Verdonk. This incredible action - Verdonk and Ali being ideological soulmates when it comes to taking on Muslim fundamentalism - was simply too unpalatable for the small liberal party that held the balance of parliamentary power. When Verdonk refused to step down they pulled the rug away from Prime-Minister Balkenende's coalition and opened up the way for fresh elections, scheduled for late November.
The latest polls show that the Dutch Labour party, the Green Left and the old-style hardline leftist Socialist Party will do very well if an election were held today, possibly together grabbing a parliamentary majority. And the right which was handed the Fortuyn legacy - boosted by the Van Gogh murder - on a silver platter has miraculously chosen to deconstruct itself. An odd development given the right's success in taking a tough stance on immigration, something the voters apparently wanted, and managing one of Europe's better performing economies.
The traditional standard bearer of free-market policies and a hawkish foreign policy, the VVD, appears to be split after an intense internal leadership struggle between "iron" Rita Verdonk and the more centrist Mark Rutte who won the race. The VVD had already suffered after it booted out Geert Wilders, its maverick member of parliament who formed his own party after his views on Turkey entering the European Union were no longer reconcilable with VVD and formal government policy. Wilders who given his frank commentary about radical Islam is living under round the clock security will enter the elections with his own Party for Freedom, but according to the latest numbers will not gain more than a paltry 2% of the popular vote.
The remnants of Fortuyn's party, List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the meantime has split with one of its key members - and also a former immigration minister- Hilbrand Nawijn who has formed the Party for The Netherlands. I leave it to your imagination where his platform of anti-Muslim policies and free public transportation will get him in the polls, but far it is not. The only potential star on the right is former Fortuyn associate and Rotterdam city politician Marco Pastors, the one to credibly claim the old master's mantle with a platform based on classical liberal values and an uncompromising attitude towards the nation's ingrained politically correct culture. Yet, Pastors has been late to come out of the gate with his new party - One Netherlands - a fact corroborated by the poor numbers for his venture in the latest poll.
Of course, various commentators have pointed out that the divided right should have worked harder to align their interests and combine forces under one banner. It seems that personalities and political nuances however have for now kept them separated without any real prospects for cooperation. Still, ideologically they may not be that far apart, and the various groupings together or under the banner of a reformed VVD could be able to offer the Dutch voter a realistic alternative to the traditional left-of-center option where the Dutch have been stuck for most of the last four decades.
Yes, it is early days and the left's quest to reclaim lost ground since its electoral setbacks in 2002 may be peaking a little bit too early. However their sustained strength over a fractured opponent makes one wonder if the Dutch really ever turned to the right.
