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Dutch election: Geert Wilders warns 'genie will not go back in the bottle' Dutch election: Geert Wilders warns 'genie will not go back in the bottle'
(about 4 hours later)
Millions of Dutch voters head to the polls today in a high-stakes general election overshadowed by a diplomatic standoff between Turkey and EU capitals that analysts believe has played in the prime minister’s favour. Dutch voters are going to the polls in the first of three key European votes this year in which populist parties, heartened by Britain’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s US victory, are seeking electoral breakthroughs.
The vote has been widely viewed abroad through the prism of the UK’s Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s US victory. On Tuesday late polls gave Mark Rutte’s liberal centre-right VVD party its clearest lead yet over Geert Wilders’ populist, anti-Islam Freedom party, which some put down in third or even fifth place. With voting under way in bright sunshine on Wednesday, a leading polling aggregator showed a clear lead for the liberal VVD party of the prime minister, Mark Rutte, who was predicted to win between 24 and 28 seats in the 150-seat parliament.
Wilders appeared early on Wednesday morning to cast his vote at a polling station in The Hague. After casting his ballot, Wilders told reporters: “Whatever the outcome of the election today, the genie will not go back into the bottle.” The far-right Freedom party (PVV), led by the anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders, was forecast to win 19-23 seats, barely ahead of the Christian Democrats (CDA) on 19-21 seats and the progressive liberals of Democrats 66 (D66) with 17-19, both natural coalition partners for Rutte.
Experts said the increasingly acrimonious spat with Ankara – over the Dutch refusal to allow Turkish ministers to campaign in the Netherlands for a referendum on plans to grant Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sweeping new powers – had benefited Rutte. The election will not, however, produce a clear winner, with as many as 15 parties set to return at least one MP and none likely to gain more than 17% of seats: months of complex coalition negotiations lie ahead.
In a campaign dominated by Wilders’ core themes of immigration and integration, the row “allowed Rutte to show himself as a statesman – and to send a Turkish minister packing”, said André Krouwel, a political scientist at Amsterdam’s Free University. Wilders cast his ballot at a polling station in The Hague early on Wednesday, telling reporters afterwards: “Whatever the outcome of the election today, the genie will not go back into the bottle. People feel misrepresented.”
But Rutte said he hoped the election, which has been overshadowed since the weekend by an increasingly acrimonious diplomatic standoff between Turkey and a number of EU capitals, would slow the populists’ momentum.
The vote was “a chance for a big democracy like the Netherlands to make a point, to stop this domino effect ... of the wrong sort of populism,” Rutte said, though he warned there was still a chance the PVV might be the biggest party.
Up to 30% of voters were undecided going into polling day, leaving the outcome unpredictable. But Wilders, who has pledged to “de-Islamise” the Netherlands and take it out of the EU, is unlikely to enter government however well he fares: no other main party will work with the PVV in coalition.
Nonetheless, after the UK’s vote to leave the EU and Trump’s “America first” upset last year, a first-place finish for the PVV would rock Europe – with the far-right Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, set to make the run-off in France’s presidential poll in May and the Eurosceptic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) on target to win its first federal seats in Germany later in the year.
Analysts said Rutte had benefited from his handling of the fierce row with Turkey over the government’s refusal to allow Turkish ministers to address rallies of Dutch Turks before a referendum next month on plans to grant Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sweeping new powers.
Erdoğan has reacted furiously to the Dutch decision, repeatedly accusing the government of behaving like Nazis, suspending high-level political contacts, threatening trade sanctions, and claiming the Netherlands was guilty of the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.
In a campaign dominated by Wilders’ core themes of immigration and integration, the row has “allowed Rutte to show himself as a statesman – and to send a Turkish minister packing”, said André Krouwel, a political scientist at Amsterdam’s Free University.
“What better publicity could a politician want a few days before an election?” Klouwer said. “Rutte was able to show he could actually expel Turks, and to tell Wilders: ‘You’re just sitting there, tweeting’ … This has won Rutte the election.”“What better publicity could a politician want a few days before an election?” Klouwer said. “Rutte was able to show he could actually expel Turks, and to tell Wilders: ‘You’re just sitting there, tweeting’ … This has won Rutte the election.”
A survey by the Dutch pollster Maurice de Hond said 86% of voters backed the way the two-term Dutch prime minister, 50, had handled the situation. In a possibly unrelated incident, two big Dutch voting information websites were targeted by a cyberattack on Wednesday. Several Twitter accounts including those of the European parliament, the German newspaper Die Welt and Amnesty International were also hacked, apparently by pro-Erdoğan activists.
On Tuesday, however, having suspended high-level relations and repeatedly described the Dutch government as Nazis, Erdoğan warned the Netherlands it faced further retaliation. As many as 13 million Dutch voters are expected to cast their ballots in the poll, with polling stations closing at 9pm. Provisional results are expected to be known by midnight, with the final count formally announced on 21 March.
Erdoğan said he held the Netherlands responsible for Europe’s worst mass killing since the second world war. In a televised speech, he said of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre: “We know the Netherlands and the Dutch … we know how rotten their character is, from their massacre of 8,000 Bosnians there.” Voting in The Hague, Sonja van Spronsen, a 45-year-old office worker, said she hoped the next government could produce a “good, convivial Netherlands. Not just arguing and complaining but with a good positive vision of how to move forward that we can all get behind.”
In an episode that 20 years later remains a national trauma, Dutch UN peacekeepers failed to prevent killings for which a UN tribunal later found the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić guilty of genocide. Van Spronsen, who voted for “one of the parties on the right”, did not rule out a role for the PVV. “It’s a sense of powerlessness,” she said. “The average person is dissatisfied to an extent – a lot of Dutch think the same, but just don’t say it in such strong terms.”
Rutte denounced Erdoğan’s claim as a “repugnant distortion of history”, saying the Dutch would “not lower [themselves] to this level”. Followed by a scrum of reporters, Jesse Klaver, the 30-year-old leader of the Green Left party, which is set to quadruple its MPs to between 16 and 18, voted mid-morning and directed his message at younger voters: “Above all, get out and vote, and vote for Green-Left because it’s the party of the future.”
Foreign votes could be crucial to Erdoğan’s efforts to win the referendum, the outcome of which is likely to be tight. More than 1.4 million Turkish nationals eligible to vote live in Germany, with a further 250,000 in the Netherlands. Ben Baks, a 60-year-old civil servant, said he voted Green-Left but wanted to see a rainbow coalition combining parties from left and right. “Whatever happens, we need a country that’s governable,” he said. “We need to send out a strong signal to other European countries.”
Erdoğan described the Netherlands, and Germany – which has also barred Turkish ministers from trying to drum up expat votes – as “bandit states” that were harming the EU. But Donny Bonsink, a 24-year-old chef, predicted a strong showing for Wilders. “Islamisation in the Netherlands has to stop,” he said. “We’ve had governments trying to make immigration work for 40 years and all it’s brought us is problems. People are angry.”
Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said Ankara was playing the role of victim as it sought to “build solidarity” in the run-up to its referendum. Germany would not take part in a “competition of provocations”, he said. Informal coalition talks between at least four and probably five parties will begin on Thursday, although the process does not formally get under way until 23 March, when the new parliament sits for the first time.
The Turkish president also accused the Netherlands of “state terror” over the weekend’s events, when Turkey’s family minister, Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, was escorted out of the country and the foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, denied permission to land. If the VVD finishes as the largest party, Rutte will seek a majority of 76 seats, most likely with other mainstream parties including the CDA, the centre-left Labour party (PvdA) and D66. Klaver’s Green-Left could well play a kingmaker role, though it would face major policy conflicts with the centre-right.
As many as 28 parties are fielding candidates in the Dutch vote, with Rutte’s liberal VVD party on course to win up to 28 seats in the 150-seat parliament, and Wilders, having led in the polls for the best part of two years, predicted to secure 24. Coalition building, especially when so many parties are involved, could take months: the average in the Netherlands is three months, but in 1977 the process took more than 200 days.
On Wednesday, Erdoğan’s comments were denounced by the European council president, Donald Tusk. “Rotterdam, the city of Erasmus, totally destroyed by the Nazis, which now has a mayor born in Morocco: if any anyone sees fascism in Rotterdam they are completely detached from reality,” he told a plenary session of the European Parliament.
Tusk’s remarks were echoed by the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, who told parliament he was “scandalised” by the Turkish comments, saying they drove Turkey further away from becoming a member of the EU.
Wilders’ performance is being keenly watched ahead of the presidential elections in France, in which the Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, is expected to reach the second-round run-off, and before a possible strong showing by the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in German parliamentary polls this autumn.
But the Dutch vote is about far more than Wilders, who was found guilty of inciting discrimination in December and whose brief election manifesto includes pledges to close mosques, ban sales of the Qur’an, bar Muslim immigrants and take the Netherlands out of the EU.
In a Dutch parliament fragmented as never before, a record 14 parties are expected to wind up with at least one MP, including eight with 10 or more and six with up to 25. Analysts expect the governing coalition that emerges will involve at least five parties. Up to 15% of voters have yet to make up their minds.
“Wilders will play no role in forming the government,” Krouwel said. “But he has played a huge part in the campaign and in that sense has already won, because the two biggest rightwing parties have adopted his policies.”
Besides the VVD, the centre-right Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is forecast to fare well, while on the left, the social democrat Labour party (PvdA) – part of Rutte’s governing coalition – is expected to lose most of its MPs.
But the pro-EU, liberal-progressive Democrats 66 (D66) party is on track to return more, and GroenLinks (the Green Left) is on course for its best ever result – and a possible kingmaker role.
The EU-Turkey standoff has further strained relations already frayed over human rights, and looks likely to dim yet further Turkey’s prospects of joining the bloc, a process that has been ongoing for more than 50 years.