After the Dutch Vote: Prime Minister Hails Win Over "Wrong Kind of Populism"; Traditional Parties Suffer in General Elections (Parts 1 & 2)

Dutch General Election: German Chancellor Angela Merkel "Very Happy" Over Results

What Will the Dutch Decide? (Parts 1 & 2)

Is the Far-right Headed for Victory in the Netherlands? Inside Story

The Netherlands has long been known as a country of socially liberal values.

Why should the rise in the so-called far-right in The Netherlands be an enigma? The Dutch were very liberal when there was no threat to their liberal way of life. Now that there is, the Dutch have become more 'conservative.' As Islam has grown in strength in The Netherlands, and as Islam is very regressive and illiberal, this has been the motivating factor for the rise in the far-right in the country. This should not be a surprise to anyone. – Mark

Wilders Condemns 'Moroccan Scum', Calls Dutch to Regain Their Country as He Launches His Election

Dutch politician Geert Wilders calls on the Dutch people to regain their country as he launches his election campaign, condemning what he calls "Moroccan scum" in the country. Rough cut (no reporter narration)
Watch the video here

Wilders’ Chance of Dutch Cabinet Post Fades
FINANCIAL TIMES: The chances of Geert Wilders, the controversial anti-Islam politician, becoming a minister in the next Dutch government receded on Thursday after the Christian Democrat party declined to enter talks with either Mr Wilders or the Liberal party that won last week’s general election.

Mark Rutte, leader of the Liberals, was seeking to form a rightwing coalition of his party, Mr Wilders’ Freedom party, the PVV, and the Christian Democrats, CDA, in order to command a 76-seat parliamentary majority.

“It’s very disappointing, the CDA is pulling the plug on this,” Mr Wilders, who wants to end immigration from Muslim countries, told reporters. “The PVV would like nothing more than to govern. We want to be in the cabinet to change the Netherlands.” >>> Michael Steen in Amsterdam | Thursday, June 17, 2010

Wilders Makes Shock Gains in Dutch Elections
THE INDEPENDENT: Dutch populist Geert Wilders yesterday stunned the Netherlands by coming third in general elections – a historic vote that could see him enter a coalition government.

Best known for his strident attacks on Islam, Mr Wilders' electoral triumph sent shock waves through the country's large immigrant communities and sounded the death knell for the image of the Netherlands as a bastion of tolerance.

The shock-factor was all the greater as the peroxide-haired politician had appeared sidelined during the election campaign, as the mainstream parties focused on how to deal with the nation's economic woes and immigration slipped down the political agenda.

Yet Mr Wilders made the strongest gains in Wednesday's election, doubling the number of seats for his Freedom Party to 24. The pro-business VDD party – which Mr Wilders left to set up on his own – won 31 of the 150 seats up for grabs, pipping the Labour Party of former Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen by a single seat in the narrowest ever electoral victory.

"The impossible has come true," a triumphant Mr Wilders said, noting that 1.5 million people had chosen his party's "optimistic" platform. "More security, less crime, less immigration, less Islam – that is what the Netherlands has chosen."

His party picked up the bulk of its seats from another party on the right, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's Christian Democrats. After eight years in power, his party suffered an historic defeat, losing nearly half its seats. Visibly emotional, Mr Balkenende called the results "very, very disappointing" and announced he was quitting politics. >>> Vanessa Mock in Brussels | Friday, June 11, 2010

Geert Wilders to Enter Dutch Government After Support for Anti-Islamic Party Triples
THE TELEGRAPH: Geert Wilders is on course to become a kingmaker for a new coalition government in the Netherlands after his anti-Islamic Freedom Party nearly tripled its representation in the Dutch parliament in Wednesday's elections.

The far-Right Dutch politician's controversial PVV party came third, behind Labour and the victorious Liberals.

PVV increased its number of MPs from nine to 24 after campaigning against immigration, for a tax on Muslim headscarves, a ban on the Koran and against the building of new mosques.

"We would love to govern," Mr Wilders said. "1.5 million people voted for us and our plans for more safety, less immigration and less Islam. We are the big winner and they cannot ignore us. We want to be taken seriously."

Mark Rutte, the leader of the centre-right Liberal VVD and the man expected to be the next Dutch prime minister, hailed his party's unprecedented victory. "It appears as if for the first time in our history that the VVD has become the largest party in the Netherlands," he said.

Mr Rutte's VVD is now expected to form a Right-wing coalition government with Mr Wilders and the Christian Democrat CDA, after that party lost 20 seats to fall from first to fourth place in Dutch politics. >>> Bruno Waterfield | Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Netherlands Shifts to the Right
NRC HANDELSBLAD INTERNATIONAL: The right-wing liberal VVD and populist PVV were the big winners of Wednesday's parliamentary election in the Netherlands. Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende was ousted after eight years in power.

After a neck-and-neck contest with the Labour party, the VVD emerged victorious, garnering 31 of 150 seats in parliament, with 98 percent of the votes counted. "It looks like, for the first time in history, the VVD will be the biggest party in the Netherlands," VVD leader Mark Rutte told supporters Thursday morning, when preliminary results showed Labour would be left with 30 seats. The right-wing liberals may have shaken the social democrats, led by former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen, but never has the biggest party in parliament occupied so few seats, and never was the margin seperating it from the runner-up so slim.

Geert Wilders' PVV won the most in the election. Wilders, who is internationally known for his unequivocal criticism of Islam, went from 9 to 24 seats in parliament. While he ran a muted campaign and polls predicted he would barely double his seats, Wilders proved especially popular in the south-east of the country. His growing following there is part of the reason the Christian democratic party of incumbent prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende was halved at the polls. The CDA lost 20 of its 41 seats and will now be the fourth party in Dutch parliament. >>> News Staff, NRC Handelsblad | Thursday, June 10, 2010

Dutch Election: Liberals Take One-seat Lead as Far-right Party Grows in Influence
THE TELEGRAPH: The Liberals have won a narrow one-seat lead in the Dutch election, putting them in pole position to form a coalition.

Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders. Photograph: The Telegraph
With 88 per cent of the votes counted, published partial results showed the Liberals with 31 and Labour on 30.

But the real victory went to Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV), which demands an end to immigration from Muslim countries and a ban on new mosques. The PVV took its number of seats from nine in the last parliament to 24, and could hope to enter a coalition government.

The far-right leader with his distinctive shock of fair hair called the result "magnificent".

"The impossible has happened," he told a televised party gathering. "We are the biggest winner today. The Netherlands chose more security, less crime, less immigration and less Islam."

The election ousted Christian Democrat Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende from eight years in office.

The Liberals' narrow lead gives leader Mark Rutte a mandate to form a coalition and become prime minister, but sticking to his austerity policies could prove tough because he needs at least three other parties to secure a parliamentary majority. >>> | Thursday, June 10, 2010

Wilders Hails Israel 'Fighting Jihad'
THE JERUSALEM POST: Dutch "values" party head set to gain seats in current election.

Geert Wilders, who is demanding a halt to immigration from Muslim countries as the centerpiece of his campaign for the Dutch prime ministership, has hailed Israel for “fighting the jihad” and warned that “the West is next” if Israel is unsuccessful.

“Israel is the canary in the coal mine,” Wilders said in a recent telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post, ahead of Wednesday’s elections in the Netherlands. “The jihad against Israel isn’t against Israel only. It’s against the whole West.”

A year ago, Wilders’s PVV (Party for Freedom) was scoring 28 percent in opinion polls and appeared to have a realistic prospect of winning the elections. It has declined since then, however, he said, as economic issues have become increasingly dominant.

“There’s not a big chance that I’ll become prime minister,” he said.

Nonetheless, the PVV is expected to double its current nine seats in the 150-member parliament, and front-runner Mark Rutte, of the People’s Party for Freedom of Democracy (VVD), said this week that he was not ruling out Wilders’s party as a coalition partner.

Wilders, who is Catholic, has faced a barrage of criticism, legal action and death threats for expressing trenchant criticism of Islam, and lives amid constant security precautions. He told the Post that while he believes “there are moderate Muslims,” and that many Muslims living in the West are moderate, law-abiding people, “I don’t believe there is a moderate Islam.”

He described Islam as “a totalitarian ideology – against freedom, and the rule of law, and the separation of church and state.”

He said the influx of Muslims into countries such as Holland was causing “the Islamification of our societies.” In the wake of his 2008 film Fitna, he noted, he was “taken to a criminal court in the Netherlands for things I said about Islam” and had to wage a legal battle last year to enter Britain after first being barred.

“Freedom of speech is under attack,” he said. “It wouldn’t have happened if I had criticized Catholicism.” Wilders said Holland’s Muslim population had grown to about one million (out of the 16 million national populace), and that “tens of thousands are still arriving each year, from Somalia, Iraq, Morocco, Turkey” and beyond. In other European countries, the percentage of Muslims was much higher, he said. The influx “is bringing enormous changes,” he said, speaking about women and homosexuals being harassed in the streets in some Muslim neighborhoods and the rise of Shari’a courts. >>> David Horovitz | Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Anti-Islam MP Could Join New Dutch Coalition
THE INDEPENDENT: Voters seeking fiscal discipline and tighter immigration laws appear set to back a new right-wing government in a national election today, and may even double their support for the anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders.

The People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, an immigrant-wary, free-market party that has not led a government in nearly 100 years, has taken a commanding lead in the polls. Read on and comment >>> | Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Far-right Anti-Islam Party Set to Double Seats in Dutch Election
THE TELEGRAPH: The far-right Party for Freedom, which has campaigned on a ticket of ending the "Islamic invasion", is expected to double its representation in the Dutch parliament, giving it enough seats to become a potential ruling coalition candidate.

The party is predicted to win 18 seats in the forthcoming elections. It currently holds nine.

Led by anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders, the party claims that 40 per cent of social security payments go to non-Western immigrants and that people of Moroccan origin are suspected of committing crime five times more often than the indigenous Dutch.

"The sluice gates are wide open", Mr Wilders said in a campaign video that showed planes landing in Holland as women in headscarves outnumber natives in shopping street scenes.

"Every day we are confronted with mass immigration: headscarves, burqas, minarets, social security dependence, crime ... it never ends," he laments as dramatic music plays in the background of the clip released ahead of June 9 parliamentary elections.

"Whole neighbourhoods are being Islamised."

Mr Wilders' bold move onto the shaky ground of multi-cultural tolerance, for long a matter of Dutch pride, "has prompted other parties to adopt a stricter approach to security and the integration of Muslims", said political analyst Martin Rosema of Twente University. >>> | Monday, June 07, 2010

Photo: NRC Handelsblad
Anti-immigration Wilders Runs a Muted Campaign
NRC HANDELSBLAD: As the Dutch election campaign centres on the economy, the populist Islam-basher Geert Wilders has lost momentum.

Geert Wilders makes clear choices about which media he talks to. He refuses to be interviewed by NRC Handelsblad, for example, and to give reasons for his refusal. Interviews with media that are, apparently, unacceptable to him don’t seem to fit into his campaign strategy. He also denied daily Trouw an interview and generally avoids public television, though he participates in their prime ministerial debates in the run-up to the June 9 election.

When he does appear in the media, Wilders tries to send a clear message: Islam is a huge danger, mass immigration costs billions, and the average Dutch voter is best served by the left socio-economic programme of his PVV. Wilders, who until 2004 sat in parliament for the right-wing liberal VVD, promises the state pension age will not be raised, tax benefits on mortgages will remain intact, and there will be no cuts in unemployment benefit. But he turns every political debate to his core business. “Other parties want to slash unemployment benefits while seven billion euros are spent each year on mass immigration,” was one of his first contributions to last Wednesday’s TV debate on the economy.

The remark was his attempt to regain lost ground in the final weeks of the election campaign. Six months ago, his party was leading some of the polls, but it has been overtaken by the right-wing liberals, Labour and the Christian democrats. When the government fell in February, Wilders proclaimed that the election battle would be between his party and Labour. But the real fight is now between the traditional left and right. Primary combatants are Job Cohen, the labour party leader, Mark Rutte, head of the right-wing liberal party VVD, and Jan Peter Balkenende of the Christian democrats. Wilders has been edged to the sidelines now the principal electoral issue is the economy rather than immigration. Changed his tone >>> Barbara Rijlaarsdam and Herman Staal | Monday, May 31, 2010

NRC HANDELSBLAD: Dissident breaks ranks with Wilders' party: For years, Geert Wilders' PVV party presented a remarkably unified front to the outside world. Now, for the first time, one of the PVV's members of parliament is openly breaking ranks. >>> Barbara Rijlaarsdam and Herman Staal | Published Wednesday, May 12, 2010; Updated Friday, May 14, 2010

Geert Wilders, the Ultra-right Firebrand, Campaigns to Be Holland's Prime Minister
THE OBSERVER: Radical anti-Islamic politics are under the microscope as a hero of the far right tries to capitalise on cultural divisions

In the street market outside Almere's glass-fronted Stadhuis – the council offices – stalls are selling clothes and toys, typical Dutch sausages and cuts of glistening ham. At another stall, occasional shoppers inspect piles of Islamic headscarves and ankle-length gowns. But if many of the councillors in the Stadhuis have their way, that stall will not be doing a roaring trade for much longer.

The party that won most seats in the municipal elections in Almere earlier this year – although it failed to form a governing coalition – would like to ban the wearing of headscarves in public buildings such as the Stadhuis, as well as banning the construction of new mosques. That party is the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), of Geert Wilders, the populist firebrand behind the anti-Islamic film Fitna, who has accused Muslims of trying to "colonise" his country.

Three months ago, almost a quarter of Almere's voters backed the PVV and Wilders was being tipped as a possible prime minister in forthcoming elections on 9 June. "Today Almere and The Hague," said Wilders –"tomorrow the whole of the Netherlands. This is our springboard for success."

His poll fortunes may have diminished somewhat since then, as the country's mainstream parties have toughened up their own acts on immigration. But the blond-mulleted Islamophobe may yet be credited with transforming how Holland does its politics. >>> Peter Beaumont, Almere | Sunday, May 16, 2010



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Wilders' Party to Take Part in European Elections
NRC HANDELSBLAD: Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) has registered to take part in the June 4 elections for the European Parliament, the party announced on Monday. The controversial Dutch politician will campaign under the motto "For the Netherlands". No names of candidates were released.

Wilders' national focus targets the financial contributions made by the Netherlands to the EU. "Those billions should go to Dutch citizens instead of farmers in Poland, France and Portugal," Wilders said in a statement. On his website he said he wants to get rid of the European Parliament and limit the power of the European Commission. >>> NRC Handelsblad’s News Staff | Tuesday, February 17, 2009

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