“The one and a half meters returns, ladies and gentlemen,” the political analyst shouted m Bram Douwes joined loudly on Tuesday – a thunderous vocalization of the nothing that came from The Hague. On Monday the cabinet had argued for compliance with the basic measures, on Tuesday it was already about an early press conference, while the House squabbled about 2G and 3G.
In news hour, where the rather exaggerated ‘mini-lockdown’ appeared for the current situation, doctor and microbiologist Marc Bonten explained things clearly. The Netherlands does not want a total healthcare infarction, does not want severe measures and does not want vaccination compulsion. All three together will not work and so politicians have to choose. “Rutte and De Jonge are uncertain”, Arjan Noorlander indicated the indecision in The Hague.
With all this fear in the eyes of the Dutch politicians, I began to long for a type of Meinema, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs who can simply call the proposals on his desk ‘a cowardly collection of compromises of a dime’. Before you search Teletext to see if you missed the twelfth resignation in Rutte III: Maarten Meinema was made up. He is the main character of the drama series Ministry of Foreign Affairs (BNNVARA).
Meinema seems to have flown in from a time when ministers carried their authority with the obviousness of a good burgundy. He is decisive, intuitive, independent and disregards the fearful conventions of the mediacracy. “Of course I take questions,” he says about a press conference. When the Prime Minister calls, Meinema pushes him away. By the way, Meinema says about that prime minister, played by Jacob Derwig, as if he has discovered that it is actually all fiction: “He is not a prime minister, he is acting one.”
Boned cynicism
Meinema herself is acted by Kees Prins, who said that he had looked a bit at Hans van Mierlo. He is a man who forgets the names of his colleagues, but who knows well what is happening to him in a moral sense: “The first day and I immediately have blood on my hands.”
Political fiction often shows what we lack in real politics. The West Wing offered the Americans in the era of the anti-intellectual George W. Bush the Nobel laureate Josiah Bartlet. When that same people elected the incorruptible Obama to the White House, they reveled in House of Cards to assassin president Frank Underwood. (Then came Trump, whom no fiction could match.) In Ministry of Foreign Affairs Meinema is the exception: the other politicians in the series are driven by a boneless cynicism, in which it is not the correctness of the policy that matters, but the fear of the reaction of public opinion. (Fiction! Fiction!)
Meinema is not perfect: he does not put the cap on the bottle after pouring his first whiskey. His alcoholism is rapidly brought to a head in Frank Ketelaar’s scenario, as are political developments. That has to do with the fact that everything is crammed into four episodes, so that the characters have to pronounce explanatory sentences all the time. Much goes in haste. From a request to resign, to an order to resign, to an escape in minutes – there’s room for improvement. You wonder why, if this project was rigged anyway, twelve instead of four episodes were made.
The gullible intemperance with which Prince shapes his minister makes him an anti-Rutte par excellence. Of course, it’s not wise for the ship’s captain to let himself be filled to the brim every night (although Noah, the father of all alcoholics, piloted his boat safely through the greatest crisis of his time). But there are days when you’d give something for a leader who wouldn’t settle for a cowardly collection of dime compromises.
#Maarten #Meinema #BuZa #antiRutte