People make strict demands on the memory of politicians. Everyone forgets things, you do nothing about it, but if a politician no longer remembers what he answered to parliamentary questions on 23 February 2014 at ten past twelve, he is immediately treated as a suspect. Then he wants to keep something under his hat.
Wopke Hoekstra, CDA leader and Minister of Finance, has emerged as an investor in a tax haven. A curious thing. A friend did something with ecotourism in Africa and Hoekstra, at the time at McKinsey, decided in 2009, in the middle of the credit crisis, to invest 25,000 euros. The company is located in the Virgin Islands, but Hoekstra “didn’t realize that at the time”, he tweeted after revelations of the FD, Trouw and investico.
You could think that he wanted to mask his mistake, but this has not been proven. It also matters little. Politicians more often say that they do not know or have forgotten facts, but that does not take away their responsibility for those facts.
The moment when Hoekstra’s money ended up in a tax haven seems relevant to me: precisely then, politicians decided to become extremely strict on people who did not realize something about their benefits or allowance.
Rutte I (2010-2012) decided that after a second mistake people had to repay their benefits plus a 150 percent fine. As early as 2013, Hoekstra’s party colleague Pieter Heerma signaled that this led to “injustice”. It didn’t help: carelessness should be treated as fraud. From 2011, parents with childcare allowance experienced that “the smallest administrative shortcomings” were the reason that they “have to repay an entire year of allowance”, according to the final report of the House on the Allowance Affair.
Ergo: thousands of citizens have already learned years ago to come up with the defence, as Hoekstra did this weekend, that they did not realize something. It will partly explain why so many voters no longer have patience for politicians who do not know or have forgotten something.
Whether Hoekstra should resign is up to the House, but it concerns facts from eight years before his ministry and the question is what it yields in this viscous formation to weaken the disintegrated cabinet with the umpteenth departure.
It does seem elementary for his credibility that he openly accepts his mistake, not hidden behind a Twitter account. Politicians do not build authority by constantly displaying how good they are, but above all by frankly acknowledging what they are doing wrong. Also given the experience of all citizens who made a mistake in more modest circumstances – and paid a much higher price.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 5, 2021