World news – Same team, different mix, as Rutte just missed the dream ticket – DutchNews.nl

The sight of Sigrid Kaag dancing on a table in reaction to the election success of D66 proves, not least, that Calvinism is declining in the Netherlands.

The Dutch voters delivered a result on Wednesday evening, which was both surprising and a confirmation of the status quo. Two months after the entire cabinet fell out of favor in response to a report on the handling of the child benefit scandal, the four parties in that government increased their representation to an estimated 79 seats.

The two parties that led the investigation into this scandal and Denouncing the bureaucratic brutality with which working families were treated as fraudsters (the stain of racism was outside its purview and will be covered in a future investigation) were among the biggest losers.

The Socialists (SP) may be right feeling hurt. After promoting disadvantaged families for the past four years, their reward was that a large portion of their votes was withdrawn by Thierry Baudet’s conspiratorial Covid caravan.

Three weeks after the nuclear weapons collapse due to anti-Semitism, Baudet was a forum for democracy the main winner among the small players, rising from two to eight seats.

The Christian Democrats (CDA) were the only coalition party to drop from 19 to 14 seats, which directly underscores Wopke Hoekstra’s overwhelming campaign and deep divisions The close leadership competition between Health Minister Hugo de Jonge and Pieter Omtzigt, crusader of the back benches and one of the two leading forces in the child support investigation, has left its scars, but the bigger damage came in 2010 when the party came across the decision It was split with Rutte to join a minority government, that of Geert Wild ers’ Anti-Islam-PVV is supported.

After Wopke Hoekstra had previously refused to appear as leader because he judged himself to be better as an administrator, he sees himself confirmed primarily by his poor performance in the debates , but may now struggle to hold on to his job as Treasury Secretary.

D66 was the biggest winner with a tentative 24 seats, which is the best result in the general election to date. But Mark Rutte’s VVD also held up well, adding two seats in 2017 as Kaag benefited mainly from the desertion of the GroenLinks voters.

The two parties will undoubtedly form the next coalition, but despite initial predictions, the easiest option would be one Three-way partnership with the CDA will leave them one seat ahead of the majority.

Hoekstra has to decide whether a chaste CDA wants to rejoin the gang. Kaag will come at a heavy price, possibly including Hoekstra’s position at the Treasury, where D66 accuses him of worsening relations within the European Union.

Europe is an area where D66 wants to change the tone in addition to education the party wants to reintroduce scholarships for students and a friendlier attitude towards refugees.

The shift in the balance also makes the choice of a fourth partner less easy. Four years ago, D66 suspended its differences with the Christian Union on medico-ethical issues and managed to work constructively on a number of issues such as education and migration.

A more confident D66, however, will be less willing to accept the conscience of the CU on policies like abortion rights and voluntary termination of life (“voltooid leven”), which are deeply embedded in the party’s liberal ethos.

An alternative option is Labor (PvdA), which is a “grand coalition “Of the four parties that have ruled the government since the 1980s – and all of which were implicated in the performance scandal. Rutte IV would also have a majority in the Senate. Labor had reached an agreement before the elections not to join a coalition without GroenLinks (GL), but now Jesse Klaver’s party has lost half of its seats. PvdA chairman Lilianne Ploumen might feel entitled to lead it alone.

JA21, who broke away from Baudet’s party during the anti-Semitism debacle, also has eight seats in the Senate and is a potential power broker, but as a right-wing nationalist party she has to crack some tough nuts on immigration and immigration Europe with D66. At the other end, the new Volt Nederland party would be an attractive partner for D66, but less so for Rutte, as it is inexperienced and closely linked to Kaag’s party.

The obvious role for Kaag herself is the foreign minister who Replaced bureaucratic Stef Blok of the VVD. Blok blocked the votes of the last parliament and called on the government to use the term « genocide » to describe the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and China’s mass internment of its Uighur minority. Both voices were D66 initiatives.

With Kaag, a former UN diplomat with a wardrobe full of iron fists and kid gloves on top, the Dutch expect to be a loud player on the world stage again.

Rutte’s fourth coalition is painfully close to being his dream line-up: an alliance of conservatives and liberals, without disruptive partners like Wilders, without leftists like the Labor Party and without cumbersome conscientious objectors like the CU. But the final piece of the puzzle may require a soul search.

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