News hour: scouts saw Omtzigt as a problem

Explorer Annemarie Jorritsma spoke extensively about Pieter Omtzigt during the 2021 exploration period, reports News hour Saturday . Jorritsma called Omtzigt a “problem”, “unsustainable” and a “risk factor” for the cabinet, according to confidential documents. The scouts went further than their official task allowed them.

“Position Omtzigt, function elsewhere”, was written on the infamous document with which scout Kajsa Ollongren walked across the Binnenhof in the spring of 2021. It led to outrage: which politicians had tried to influence the fate of an elected Member of Parliament?

Ollongren and Jorritsma immediately resigned, but did not clarify who Omtzigt had brought up. Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) denied, although the conversation reports of the reconnaissance showed that it had been about Omtzigt during his conversation. “You have to do something with Omtzigt: make a minister.” During the dramatic debate on April 1, in which the entire opposition supported a motion of no confidence and Sigrid Kaag said “our paths part here”, Rutte defended: “I remembered it wrong afterwards, and I deeply regret that.”

Urgent debate

“The April 1 debate will therefore be cast in an even worse light,” responds SP party chairman Lilian Marijnissen to News hour. “Totally unacceptable,” said Geert Wilders (PVV). Caroline van der Plas (BBB) ​​announces that she will request an urgent debate, “to be held before the summer recess”. Jorritsma and Ollongren did not want to respond.

“It was abundantly clear that after the fall of the Rutte III cabinet and the elections, a lot has been said about me,” Pieter Omtzigt writes in a statement. Twitter. “The scouts denied that, also to me, but that was always very implausible. It touches the core of Dutch politics: it is about people and power games and not about solving the big and difficult issues.”