Before we start, some personnel announcements. Arjen Lubach has been named media person of the year. There goes his image of a free, unruly television maker, encapsulated and hugged flat as he is by Hilversum. He also won the Televier ring once and now this. But it is still an honor, said the ‘media person 2022’ to Sophie van on Monday evening Khalid & Sophie. Previously, Frans Klein (video boss of the NPO), John de Mol and Matthijs van Nieuwkerk were also media persons, and we all know how it ended with them. In order not to appear too happy, Lubach pointed out that he is a nihilist and that nothing in life makes sense, so not this prize either. True, but I couldn’t quite believe him anymore.
Dan Edson da Graca. He is already the games presenter of 2023. The Floor on Sunday evening is completely in his hands: 100 candidates on a floor with 100 squares, each candidate has a specialism, one knows everything about snacks, the other knows all the Dutch cabinets by heart. What follows is a kind of country cock. One box challenges another box, whoever has the most answers right wins the neighboring box. Quite entertaining, if you like games. Together with Jelka van Houten, Edson presents da Graça on Monday evening Tough as nails, and I liked that against my own expectations. It wasn’t so much the game as the people. Ten candidates, they are plumber, shrimp fisherman, firefighter, handyman. They let them do shitty jobs, individually and as a team. Loading 25 kilo bags of sand over a course with a wheelbarrow. Stack heavy rubber plates in order. That work.
Initially I stumbled over terms such as ‘hard-working Dutchman’, the ‘backbone of society’, the ‘hard workers of this country’. Slightly populist, just not PVV. But the nice thing is, you really get to know those guys a bit. Olga the nurse, or my favorite, garbage collector Fouad. “With me it is first do, do, do, then see what the neighbor is doing and then think: ‘Oh’.” Normally I find group assignments a horror – in Expedition Robinson, Who is the Mole?. The chaos, the shouting and hassle. In Tough as nails It didn’t go smoothly either, but I caught myself smiling anyway.
Vote fraud
And now what I actually wanted to talk about, the documentary Naples on the North Sea from Powned. Filmmaker Robbie Peters followed Richard de Mos from The Hague politician from the moment the National Investigation Department accused him, a fellow party member and his party of corruption. That was in 2019, later suspicions of voting fraud and participation in two criminal organizations were added.
For three years, De Mos is filmed during campaigns, during his application for mayor, and during his recent swearing-in as a council member. He is always the same cheerful Frans, the politician who is a friend of the city. Pikant is his meeting with Jos van Rey, a politician from Limburg, who was given a one-year suspended prison sentence for roughly the same offenses. He sees a pattern. If a local politician becomes too successful, the elite will want to cut his head off. Exactly what the friends of De Mos also say.
The only one who explains what De Mos can possibly be blamed for is NRCjournalist Joep Dohmen. While De Mos calls his approach ‘ombudsman politics’, Dohmen suggests that you should perhaps call it clientelism. What is still listening to the citizen and when will it become: who pays decides? After four years, the substantive treatment of the De Mos case will begin on January 23. But if you’ve seen this documentary, you know that it doesn’t matter to his supporters what the judge will decide. De Mos glories in his role as an unjustly accused. As an unjustly convicted, he will be completely victorious.
#Suspected #corruption #cheerful #Frans