The Golden Coach will only drive again when the Netherlands is ready, according to King Willem-Alexander. If that is the condition, the carriage will never return. After all, with 17 million opinions, there is always someone who thinks it is a shame that the carriage even exists. We live in a time when everyone feels like a victim of something, says political reporter Hans van Soest.
But the king’s decision to stop using the carriage is a sensible one. The royal family’s most important task is to ensure connection in society. The Golden Coach has been under fire for several years because one of the panels shows a painting in which representatives of the former colonies pay tribute to the motherland.
When every Prinsjesdag a discussion arises about the vehicle in which the head of state drives to the parliament, this detracts from the binding task that the king has. Then we can hold on to a tradition that is more than a hundred years old, but then something much more important will eventually break. In any case, it is a good thing that it was not decided to paint over the panel, as has been suggested before. We should not try to rewrite history by partially destroying it. The fact that we now view our former colonies differently does not change that. We cannot learn from the past by erasing it. That is why it is a pity that the Golden Coach will soon not be placed in a museum, but will disappear behind the closed doors of the royal stables of Noordeinde Palace.
The discussion is not over it has now been decided that the Gouden Koets no longer runs. As long as people are still discriminated against, the past will cast a shadow over our time, the king said. But the assumption that discrimination stems from our colonial past, while popular in some circles, is a simplification of reality. Racism and discrimination occur in all cultures at all times. This cannot be solved by removing symbols from the streets. In the end we will all have to do it together.
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