The political amateurism of Dilan Yesilgöz, Pieter Omtzigt and Caroline van der Plas is pitiful. After his successful election campaign, in which he had the cordon sanitary around the PVV dismantled by the VVD, Geert Wilders has once again left his potential coalition colleagues behind. By withdrawing three of his own bills at the drop of a hat, he once again took the initiative this week.
One of the bills, drawn up in the first two years of Rutte III, aimed to ban Islamic education, mosque attendance, Koran and burqa/nikab in the public domain – not Koran possession at home. as the NOS incorrectly stated – to be prohibited under penalty of five years' imprisonment. The Constitution played no role for the PVV. When the Council of State advised negatively, Wilders said that he had no interest in “politically correct reflexes of scared people”.
Previously, the PVV had one bill submitted to terrorists “at the proposal of the AIVD” to be imprisoned for six months without the need for a judge, an “administrative detention” that, according to the legal text, could last indefinitely because the possibilities for appeal would be severely limited.
After the fall of Rutte IV last summer, both bills were still being discussed in parliament. Despite the outgoing status of the co-legislator, the House of Representatives did not consider them controversial. Yesilgöz, Omtzigt and Van der Plas also did not raise the alarm.
That was weird. Because the proposals were truly anti-constitutional in scope. The laws would not have merely put an end to the “excesses of 1968,” such as Telegrapheditor Wierd Duk recently characterized the current “cultural revolution” in one plea for a radical “paradigm change”; they would also have put an ax to the roots of the much older historical constitutional state.
A ban on Islam would destroy religious freedom, which the Netherlands has had formally since 1579 and in fact since 1853. The administrative detention would have even more obscure consequences. Such a measure threatens the English principle of habeas corpus (1679). was constitutionally enshrined in the Netherlands in 1814. It third initiativewhich wanted to deprive citizens with dual nationality of the right to vote and was thus a posthumous rejection of our own national Revolt against the tenth penny (1569), I will leave it aside, partly because the text was so poorly formulated that groups of Dutch migrants in New -Zeeland, Canada, Australia, the US and also the beloved white South Africa of House Speaker Martin Bosma would have been deprived of their right to vote.
Reason to breathe a sigh of relief? Not yet. The fact that Wilders is reconsidering his plans – he did not leave open why he cut off his “DNA” – may seem like a 'gesture', but for the recipients he has swayed it is an unwanted gift for which you have to feign joy.
Wilders forces his negotiating partners to be grateful for concessions that are no more than a cigar from their own box. If Yesilgöz and Omtzigt nevertheless still have notes to their song, Wilders can now portray them as caterpillars never enough: if he donates part of his own DNA, others must also accommodate him.
The question is whether they have an answer to that. Time and again, Yesilgöz and Omtzigt are trumped by Wilders' tactical ingenuity. When it comes to informateur Plasterk in De Zwaluwenberg, both have to rely on the strategic intuition of “good citizens”, who want change but are not interested in revolutionary politics or paradigm change.
Hubert Smeets is a journalist and historian. He writes a column here every other week.
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