Volt permanently removes Member of Parliament Nilüfer Gündogan from the group. She is also disbarred as a member of Volt. Party leader Laurens Dassen and the party board announced this in two letters to Gundogan on Friday. Volt is also appealing a preliminary injunction decision earlier this month. The ruling forced the party to reinstate the suspended MP in the group.
On Friday evening, the party sent more than 13,000 members an email explaining the decision. The letter states that Gündogan ‘unreasonably prejudices the association and its objectives’. “She has completely set her own course. For example, it files reports against those who have reported transgressive behaviour, and then expands these reports. She also joins the television program Jinek without any coordination.”
Thirteen reports of transgressive behavior were made against Nilüfer Gündogan in recent weeks: she allegedly intimidated people in the party for a long time, including an underage woman, she would have beaten people on the buttocks, kissed on the neck, she would have made sexual innuendos. and Volters have asked for sex. Volt talks about “a very disturbing pattern of (verbal, physical and sexual) transgressive behavior towards members of Volt Netherlands, experienced and reported by a large number of people”. “Such behavior is not in line with what might be expected of a prominent Volt member.”
Gündogan herself can vote on her end as a party member. Next Tuesday, in the weekly group meeting, a vote is now planned to change the group rules. This is necessary to make the expulsion of a Member of Parliament legally possible in the event of transgressive behaviour. Gündogan was invited by Dassen to attend that meeting. She will not be able to stop the change in the rules, she stands alone against party leader Laurens Dassen and MP Marieke Koekkoek. Volt has three Chamber seats.
New faction rules
According to Dassen’s proposal, it should be possible to immediately suspend or expel a Member of Parliament after reports of undesirable behaviour. Dassen also wants the faction to be able to expel MPs from now on if insurmountable conflicts arise with the majority.
After the first reports, Gündogan was suspended on Sunday, February 13, and later she was expelled from the group for the first time. According to the judge, that was illegal. That ruling was based on the current regulations, which state that warnings and an improvement plan must first be drawn up before a Member of Parliament can be expelled. After the judge’s decision, Dassen apologized to Gündogan, mediation was being prepared. An initial meeting earlier this week yielded nothing.
The fact that Volt now does not want to follow that path and announces that she will be expelled from the group again, is mainly due to the stories of five reporters in NRC about Gündogan’s behavior. Volt leader Laurens Dassen said earlier this week that he was shocked. Against NRC said Dassen and the board that they “understood the risks of the behavior exhibited by Nilüfer” [hebben] underestimated.” They apologized “to all reporters and everyone affected by this.” Internally, Dassen has become aware this week that the situation with Gundogan has become unworkable, sources say.
Board wants to expel Gundogan
Volt’s party board letter to Gundogan announcing her expulsion from the party. The board will decide on this on March 28. Like Dassen, the board also mentions the NRC article as the reason for the expulsion. In addition, the board accuses Gündogan of trivializing the reporters in its response. According to the board, her attitude does not fit with the values that Volt wants to propagate. In this way it disadvantages the party and makes employees feel unsafe. Volt wants to protect the employees who have been reported.
The board also blamed her for the behavior of Gündogan herself, together with her two lawyers, at Jinek on Thursday evening. Gundogan said on TV that she had expanded the reports of defamation and slander against the thirteen reporters, because she knew where the stories came from through the article in NRC. She had made “a reconstruction” of it, and it had been submitted to the Public Prosecution Service. She said she now knew “which dolls” were behind it.
There was much criticism among Volt employees for the way the party leadership had handled the issue. Employees did not feel protected. A group of those employees let it be known in a letter to the party leadership last week that they would not come to the group if Gundogan returned there. At Jinek, Gundogan said that she will return to the House of Representatives next Monday.
The board now wants to appeal against the judge’s ruling on Gundogan’s return. Board members have discussed it with constitutional law experts in recent days. Volt wants to make this a matter of principle, also because the preliminary relief judge issued a ruling with potentially major consequences for the way in which the House of Representatives functions. Constitutional experts pointed out NRC that judges take the seat of politics when they judge the composition of a parliamentary group.
Read also the reconstruction in NRC about Nilüfer Gündogan
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 19 March 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 19, 2022
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