Left wins Local elections in Holland

[pieter]

Friends & Visitors,

Since I linked the Dutch situation to international discussions
about Polarisation, culture clash and conflict situations over here
and mentioned the decreasing tolerance and respect of people
and between my compatriots and in societies of other European
countries, I finds it important to inform you on this.
It can be that from America this can be seen as unimportant or
just another election in a tiny part of another continent.
I see the Dutch elections as important in a West-European context,
because the Belgians, Germans and Brits watch and watched our
elections carefully, as we watch and anylise theirs in Holland.
The Local elections are important for the later National elections
for the parlaiment and government in 2007.
The elections yesterday were a mammoth victory for the Leftwing
opposition, leaving all the cities to the Social-Democratic Labour
party PvdA, and an explosive growth of the Left Populist Socialist
Party. You can see it as a vote against the tough climate, cut backs
of the government, and a politcal development you see in Poland
also, first you have a left government, than a rightwing government
and after that a left government again, and etc.
New in the Netherlands was the rise of Local or regional parties,
who thrived on City Patriotism, "own people first" rhetoric,
and local and regional issues, interests and topics.
These Livable (endurable) parties, became popular after the rise
and assacination of the "Leefbaar Rotterdam" local party Populist
Pim Fortuyn rose to power and was assasinated, after which his
party "List Pim Fortuyn" (LPF) came to power, and his ideology
influenced the other major Social-democratic, Christian-democratic
and rightwing-liberal parties.
In Poland these Livable parties are represented by PiS, LPR and
Samoobrona, in and in other European countries by the far right
National People or National-democratic parties.
A united front of the original Dutch population and migrant people
(who went voting en mass) voted Left wing this time.
I this means that my country is returning back to the recent
liberal, tolerant and Social-democratic past I don't know.
Even the left-wing parties have inherited some of the Patriotism,
Dutch culture- and language oriented ideology and practice of the
Livable, Christian-Democratic and Rightwing-Liberal parties.

Pieter

[pieter]

Will a new Left-wing government be politically correct, and minimalize critisizm on Islam, because it is chosen partly by Muslims? "After a rightwing winter an leftwing spring" was their slogan or motto.
Will they find a ballance on National and regional and foreign
issues, or will they become the big spenders they were in the past?
What is most important in the Netherlands (as it is in the USA and Poland) in my opinion is National unity, continueing to work hard on reforming our political system, society and economy. And stil there are the immigration and integration problems.

The article of in The Sunday Times - Review, was just one month ago:


The Sunday Times February 26, 2006

We should fear Holland’s silence
Islamists are stifling debate in what was Europe’s freest country, says Douglas Murray

‘Would you write the name you’d like to use here, and your real name there?” asked the girl at reception. I had just been driven to a hotel in the Hague. An hour earlier I’d been greeted at Amsterdam airport by a man holding a sign with a pre-agreed cipher. I hadn’t known where I would be staying, or where I would be speaking. The secrecy was necessary: I had come to Holland to talk about Islam.
Last weekend, four years after his murder, Pim Fortuyn’s political party, Lijst Pim Fortuyn, held a conference in his memory on Islam and Europe. The organisers had assembled nearly all the writers most critical of Islam’s current manifestation in the West. The American scholars Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer were present, as were the Egyptian-Jewish exile and scholar of dhimmitude, Bat Ye’or, and the great Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq.



Both Ye’or and Warraq write and speak under pseudonyms. Standing at the hotel desk I confessed to the girl that I didn’t have any other name, couldn’t think of a good one fast. I was given my key and made aware that the other person in the lobby, a tall figure in a dark suit, was my security detail. I was taken up to my room where I changed, unpacked and headed back out — the security guard now positioned outside my bedroom door.

I had been invited to deliver the closing speech to the memorial conference on what would have been Fortuyn’s 58th birthday. I said I would talk on the effects of Europe’s increasingly Islamicised population and advocate a tougher European counterterror strategy. There was no overriding political agenda to the occasion, simply a desire for frank discussion.

The event was scholarly, incisive and wide-ranging. There were no ranters or rabble-rousers, just an invited audience of academics, writers, politicians and sombre party members. As yet another example of Islam’s violent confrontation with the West (this time caused by cartoons) swept across the globe, we tried to discuss Islam as openly as we could. The Dutch security service in the Hague was among those who considered the threat to us for doing this as particularly high. The security status of the event was put at just one level below “national emergency”.

This may seem fantastic to people in Britain. But the story of Holland — which I have been charting for some years — should be noted by her allies. Where Holland has gone, Britain and the rest of Europe are following. The silencing happens bit by bit. A student paper in Britain that ran the Danish cartoons got pulped. A London magazine withdrew the cartoons from its website after the British police informed the editor they could not protect him, his staff, or his offices from attack. This happened only days before the police provided 500 officers to protect a “peaceful” Muslim protest in Trafalgar Square.

It seems the British police — who regularly provide protection for mosques (as they did after the 7/7 bombs) — were unable to send even one policeman to protect an organ of free speech. At the notorious London protests, Islamists were allowed to incite murder and bloodshed on the streets, but a passer-by objecting to these displays was threatened with detention for making trouble.

Holland — with its disproportionately high Muslim population — is the canary in the mine. Its once open society is closing, and Europe is closing slowly behind it. It looks, from Holland, like the twilight of liberalism — not the “liberalism” that is actually libertarianism, but the liberalism that is freedom. Not least freedom of expression.

All across Europe, debate on Islam is being stopped. Italy’s greatest living writer, Oriana Fallaci, soon comes up for trial in her home country, and in Britain the government seems intent on pushing through laws that would make truths about Islam and the conduct of its followers impossible to voice.

Those of us who write and talk on Islam thus get caught between those on our own side who are increasingly keen to prosecute and increasing numbers of militants threatening murder. In this situation, not only is free speech being shut down, but our nation’s security is being compromised.

Since the assassinations of Fortuyn and, in 2004, the film maker Theo van Gogh, numerous public figures in Holland have received death threats and routine intimidation. The heroic Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her equally outspoken colleague Geert Wilders live under constant police protection, often forced to sleep on army bases. Even university professors are under protection.

Europe is shuffling into darkness. It is proving incapable of standing up to its enemies, and in an effort to accommodate the peripheral rights of a minority is failing to protect the most basic rights of its own people.

The governments of Europe have been tricked into believing that criticism of a belief is the same thing as criticism of a race. And so it is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous to criticise a growing and powerful ideology within our midst. It may soon, in addition, be made illegal.

I had planned — the morning after my speech — to see Geert Wilders, but instead spent the time catching up with his staff. Their leader had been called in by the police to discuss more than 40 new death threats he had received over the previous days.

As I left the Netherlands I once again felt terrible sorrow for a country that is slowly being lost. A society which should be carefree and inspiring has become dark and worried. The jihad in Europe is winning. And Holland, and our continent, takes one step further into a dark and menacing future.


Douglas Murray is the author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It

[bescheid]

Pieter

You are right as Holland being the canary of Europe in things to come. It will be very interesting in as much to the out come of these elections.

I remember Pin Fortuyn. He was accused of being homosexual and a Communist. I wonder though.

It was such a shame of his death.

Charles

[pieter]

Charles,

He was a Marxist in his student years, in which he was also a exravagant gay, a social-democratic sociologist
in the eightees, and an independant journalist (Columnist for a rightwing magazine) and universaty teacher in the ninetees,
in which he wrote several rightwing populist books, about his political visions and his vision on Islam in the Duch society
(a procovative and alarming book), and in the beginning of this century he first went into local politics "Leefbaar Rotterdam"
and "Leefbaar Nederland", and afer his break with "Leefbaar Nederland" (the party found his statements and visions to extreme and to far right), he started very succesfully his own "Lijst Pim Fortyn" which became very popular just before his death and after his death. Alone he fought with the old traditional parties from center-left, left and centre right.
He was openly Gay, but in the same time got support from broade segements of the Duch society, especially the working class and Middle class. Because of his Populist revolution, he got the international attention of the Foreign press, with Belgian, German and British (BBC) television following him. His assasination and the victory of his party in may 2002, which defeated the traditional parties with a mammoth victory, leaving the Social-democrats and GreenLeft in a great poltical depression,
and starting a wave of anti-left and anti-immigrant sentiments, labeling the political correct left elite as the Left church,
and starting the culture of (death) threats against left-wing and rightwing politicians, which stil is going on today.
The body guard and security culture entered the Netherlands, where before that the prime-minister went to hsi work on a bike
in the Hague. The normality was gone, and political polarisation and tensions were back.

Pieter

[Jaga]

Pieter,

I am afraid that this left party in Holland is just "too left" or too populistic. We will see. Thank you for the update! I mean I would believe that the left party in Holland is more left that the ;eft party in the USA since Holland is just so liberal

[pieter]

Jaga,

I do not totally share your fear, because I think that the Social-democrats
will have enough backbone to continue the integration and assimilation
policy of the center right government of Christian-democrats (CDA),
rightwing-liberals (VVD) and social-liberals (D66).
Why, because they started that policy in the Purple coalition governements
of the ninetees until 2002, in which they formed coalition govenments
with the right-liberals (VVD) and the little social-liberal party D66.
The traditional social-democratic voters in the old cities with large problems,
related to immigration, crime, drugs, violence and etc. voted for the
rightwing Polulists from Lijst Pim Fortuyn and the "Livable" local parties,
so the Social-democrats have laerned from that, and see that the
working class of the Netherlands have the same law and order ideas
as the middle class, and in the same time more solidarity and less
cut backs which affected the lives of the people with low incomes.
The centre right government has a tough policy on immigrants who
are living here for already for a long time but do not speak Dutch
properly enough and asylumseekers, in the way they demand the
"newcommers" to understand the Duch culture, tradition, ethics,
rules and laws and language.
So the Social-democrats share some of these values of the government,
but only have a more progressive approach.
The Social-democratic (PvdA) party is a moderate party as the Christian-
democratic party (CDA) and the rightwing-liberals (VVD; a sort of mix of
Democratic and Republican ideas, but then the more moderate,
liberal-conservative wing of the Democrats).
The PvdA you can really compare with the American Democrats and
Britains New Labour, their party leader Wouter Bos comes from the
Multi-national Shell, and he refuses to choose for
a leftwing coalition option now to the comming national elections in 2007.
He might choose then for the Christian-democrats, who have often been
in Centre-right coalitions with the VVD, and Centre-left coalitions with
the PvdA (Labour) in the past.
The leftwing voters, Dutch working class, and migrants are in favor of
a Left coalition with the Socialist party (left peoples party) and GreenLeft
( a liberal ecologist party).
Moderate as Holland is the chance for a (radical) left coalition is always
small, because our Social-democrats are very moderate, and many of them
have links with the business world, city councils, and are high administrators,
and have been ministers and state secretaries in governments with the CDA
and VVD. Many of them cooperate with VVD aldermen and
Meirs in larger and cities and towns.
The Socialist party and the Left-wing of the Social-democratic parties really
want a Popular Front of three parties against the rigthwing parties, agianst
the cut back policy of the government and for the protection of the rights of
the working class, lower Middle class and migrants (who voted for them).
That means more state influence, more legislation (more burocracy), more
social security, a higher state debt (a government who spends
more, because of its investments in the society) and higher taxes.
It probably means that the investment climate in the Netherlands will be
less attractive in that case.
But in case of an Labour-Christian-democrat government, there will not
change so much. Labour is focussed on integration, employment, and a
little bit more equality than this government. Form an American point of view,
the Anglo-saxon economic system and the neo-liberal (chicago school of
economics) ideology in both the Democratic and Republican thinking,
the Netherlands are really a European continental (cooperative, more collective
social-market economy) country.


Dutch economy according to the CIA-factbook

Economy - overview:

The Netherlands has a prosperous and open economy, which depends heavily
on foreign trade. The economy is noted for stable industrial relations, moderate
unemployment and inflation, a sizable current account surplus, and an important
role as a European transportation hub.
Industrial activity is predominantly in food processing, chemicals, petroleum
refining, and electrical machinery. A highly mechanized agricultural sector employs
no more than 4% of the labor force but provides large surpluses for the
food-processing industry and for exports.
The Netherlands, along with 11 of its EU partners, began circulating the euro
currency on 1 January 2002. The country continues to be one of the leading
European nations for attracting foreign direct investment. Economic growth
slowed considerably in 2001-05, as part of the global economic slowdown,
but for the four years before that, annual growth averaged nearly 4%,
well above the EU average.

Agriculture - products:

grains, potatoes, sugar beets, fruits, vegetables; livestock

Industries:

agroindustries, metal and engineering products, electrical machinery and equipment,
chemicals, petroleum, construction, microelectronics, fishing

Industrial production growth rate: 2.2% (2005 est.)

Political pressure groups and leaders:

Netherlands Trade Union Federation (FNV) (consisting of a merger of Socialist
and Catholic trade unions); Christian Trade Union Federation (CNV);
Trade Union Federation of Middle and High Personnel (MHP);
Federation of Catholic and Protestant Employers Associations;
Interchurch Peace Council or IKV; large multinational firms;
the nondenominational Federation of Netherlands Enterprises

Legislative branch:

bicameral States General or Staten Generaal consists of the First Chamber
or Eerste Kamer (75 seats; members indirectly elected by the country's
12 provincial councils for four-year terms) and the Second Chamber or
Tweede Kamer (150 seats; members directly elected by popular vote
to serve four-year terms)
elections: First Chamber - last held 25 May 2003 (next to be held May 2007);
Second Chamber - last held 22 January 2003 (next to be held May 2007)
election results: First Chamber - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party
- CDA 23, PvdA 19, VVD 15, Green Party 5, Socialist Party 4, D66 3, other 6;
Second Chamber - percent of vote by party - CDA 28.6%, PvdA 27.3%, VVD 12.9%,
Socialist Party 6.3%, List Pim Fortuyn 5.7%, Green Party 5.1%, D66 4.1%;
seats by party - CDA 44, PvdA 42, VVD 28, Socialist Party 9, List Pim Fortuyn 8,
Green Party 8, D66 6, other 5

[bescheid]

pieter

Thank you for your analysis and input. You answer was very in depth and detailed, very highly excellent!

The Dutch political situation, well, for most part, the government seems to being one of stability and of reason. I would only suppose this would be the reflection of the basic nature of the Dutch people.

Keep up the good work!

Charles

[Jaga]

Pieter,

I do hope that you know better the ideas of this party and since you are optimistic, lets hope that this party would continue integration. It is so nice to learn from you more about Holland!

[pieter]

Jaga,

The Netherlands are in a difficult position right now when you see it from a political,
social-cultural and financial-economical point of view.
The Multi-ethnic Netherlands with it's people from its former colonies and migrants
is totally differant than for instance the Monethnic Poland, which is really a Catholic
country. Although Poland has its politcal, financial-economical and multilateral
problems, it has no identity problem like for instance the Netherlands and France.
Individually the Dutch are doing fine, being satisfied about their lives, family life,
social life and professional life (having job oppurtunities and nice colleages),
being flexible, dynamic and ready for a life long career, in which everybody
takes new job opportunities, adult education (evening and weekend courses,
training paid by the employers, workshops and seminars, and information
meetingts or days), being used to the idea that in a Modern, highly technical
economy and society everything constantly changes.
Like the USA and Great-Britain, we are a country with large cities with
city development (expanding, new infrastructures, new energy plants and etc.),
new cities comming up, suburbia's, trafficproblems (to many cars, trucks
and busses), a highly develloped public transport system and one of the
biggest (goods) transport sectors of Europe.
The Dutch higways have 24 hours traffic of large and smaller trucks, and
a lot of transport over our rivers (coal, iron, gasoline on boats).
Near Arnhem in the woods you always hear the light noise of the
highways passing the city and woods around it.
Most important is the traffic between the West of the Netherlands and
the East of the Netherlands, the transport of goods from Rotterdam
to Germany and the rest of Europe. The trains that pass my house
which is next to the tracks race past my house 24 hours a day too,
with containers, petrol tanks and larger military transports, at night
I saw the trucks, jeeps and other vehicles for Bosnia and Iraq passing
by. For a small country we have a very dense highway and train
infrastructure. The Dutch Transport sector employs a lot of Polish
truckdrivers, because the Dutch employers prefer the cheaper
Polish drivers, and in construction and the agriculture there are
a lot of Polish workers too.
I think the Netherlands (wether the Dutch want it or not) will
be more and more integrated into Europe, because of the open
borders, the free access of goods and persons (labour mobility
in Europe), and the Dutch dependance on other European
countries for their trade (import and export business).
More Dutch will work in other European countries and other
Europeans will come and work in the Netherlands.
Also the financial-economcial ties between Poland and the
Netherlands will become stronger, because the growing
Polish economy and the growing Polish Middle and high classes
and well educated working class makes Poland interesting
for Dutch entrepreneurs, businesspeople, bankers, tourists
and even Dutch farmers who emigrate to Poland, because
it is very hard to be a farmer in the Netherlands.
The Dutch voted against the European constitution, but
can't stop the growing integration into Europe and the
growing importance of the European market and instituations.

Pieter

[pieter]

The development to the left continues now the "rightwing-liberal" government party VVD
gets a left liberal leader, the state secretary of education Mark Rutte.
He is called a "classic liberal with a social image". It seems that the competition
in the elections of may 2007 will go over leftwing issues, and then the
GreenLeft statement " a Leftwing spring after a rightwing winter" will be no hollow
rhetoric. I am curious how the political development in my country will continue.
Clear is that there is a new generation of politcal leaders!

Pieter