A WEEK after formal negotiations opened between right-wing Dutch parties on forming a minority coalition government, and more than two months since the country’s elections, resistance is steadily growing among prominent backroom Christian democrats against the involvement of Geert Wilders and his anti-Islam party.
Up to 400 of the Christian Democratic Party faithful, with more expected to follow, have signed a petition calling on the Christian Democratic Appeal party to stop negotiating with Wilders’ PVV and the majority VVD (right-wing liberals), who are driving the talks for a minority government supported in parliament by Mr Wilders. Prominent signatories are reported to include mayors, former MPs and local politicians.
The populist Mr Wilders was the biggest winner, going from nine to 24 seats in the June elections. The latest poll shows that he would win 31 seats if an election was held now.
Mr Wilders and his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy stood on a manifesto of banning further mosques in the Netherlands, outlawing the Islamic headscarf, curbing welfare payments to Muslims and stopping medical care for illegal immigrants and their children.
The petition, initiated by a leading historian Wouter Beekers, argues that the ideology of the PVV “goes against the Dutch constitution and a threat to our democratic society”.
The shift to the right in Dutch politics emerged after talks between the VVD and the Labour party, joined by liberal left wing D66 and Groen Links (the Green Left) collapsed last month over differences about how government finances might be reformed.