If Dutch elections were a celebration of
moving forward, the process of forming
the new Dutch government
is a celebration of being backward.
Backroom deals, backward thinking, and plenty of
backstabbing. And the next three to six
months in the Netherlands will be what I call:
"Democracy Plus!"
The Netherlands is a country
with just 17 million people
and about 17 million different political parties.
The smaller the country, the more
they like to disagree.
Every time there's
an election, they have to get a bigger
and bigger piece of paper to accommodate
every single candidate from every single party.
There are always ten parties that
you've heard of, ten parties that never
quite make it into Parliament,
and this time there were an extra ten parties
that have never existed before - and let's
face it - will probably never exist again.
There was the Unity Party in (Den Haag)
which was just two guys who wanted more unity!
..Until they split up because they
couldn't agree on the definition of
"unity." There's another party called LP...
No indication of what "LP" stands for...
Let's just call them "Loser Party."
And "Niet Stemmen." The "Don't Vote" party. Literally.
Their promise is: "if you vote for us,
we'll get into Parliament and not vote
on anything - for you!" ...They didn't get any votes.
And with so many parties, no one
ever gets an outright majority. So, fine,
big deal, they just add up the parties
with the most votes. And that's your
coalition, right? NO! That would be so
democratic! In this case the biggest
parties would be Center-Right VVD,
Anti-islam PVV (Geert Wilders),
and the conservative Christian Democrats.
And wait - isn't that exactly the same
coalition that got thrown out four years ago?
Right! That's when Geert Wilders
was in the governing coalition. And when
the coalition fell apart, the headline
said "Zwarte Pete for Wilders." So -
bad news Wilders lost his seat in
government. But good news: he did end up
with his own Black Pete.
To avoid doing that again, Dutch
democracy now enters what we call:
"The Formation Process" - or, as I call it,
"Democracy Plus!" You see, they take the
democratic election results behind
closed doors. And they have a bunch of
secret meetings that last for at least
three months - it's so democratic! Who runs
this process? Well it used to be run by
the unelected formateur - also known as
"informateur - just to make things
clearer. That person was appointed by the
King. Now the formateur is appointed by
the incoming Parliament - in which Geert
Wilders has the second most votes.
Now, the most important quality of the
informteur is neutrality. It must be
someone with no personal interest in the
outcome of the cabine / who gets what
position. In the past, for example, one of
the informateurs was Uri Rosenthal...
...a name you may remember, because he ended
up as the Minister of Foreign Affairs!
Surely that was just a coincidence...?
Another informateur was Ivo Opstelten
He ended up as Minister of Justice.
At least he WAS minister of justice - until
he was caught funneling state funds to
organized crime. Oops! 'Ivo!'
And when the
process is finished - after at least three
to six months of having no government -
we can expect a new Dutch coalition with a
new Dutch cabinet. Or, as I like to call
it: "an Ikea cabinet." Because it always
looks good on paper, but you know it's
going to be a bit crooked. Trust me I'm
from Chicago. I know crooked politics
when I see it.
The Netherlands! DemocracyPlus!
At least it's not Geert Wilders again.