Wilders won't be prime minister: chaos ensues

This is an absolute disaster

Geert Wilders speaking to reporters after announcing that he won’t be prime minister, March 14 / CNN

Geert Wilders announced last week that he won’t be the next prime minister of the Netherlands. It might be a relief that “Dutch Trump” is out of the top job, but Wilders stepping aside has opened the door to something even worse—a technocratic cabinet. 

Wilders and his far-right PVV party won the most seats in our elections last November. In the months since, his anti-rule of law positions made cabinet negotiations with other parties fraught. Wilders agreed to step aside because these other parties—the center-right NSC led by Pieter Omtzigt, center-right VVD, and the farmer's BBB party—agreed that they would only form a cabinet as long as Wilders promised not to lead the country. 

Normally in the Netherlands, party leaders form the cabinet who lead the government and implement its agenda. Under this new agreement with Wilders, all of the negotiating party leaders have also agreed NOT to enter the cabinet, in a sort of mutual suicide. They will all stay in the House of Representatives.

Who will be in the cabinet, then? Good question! The plan is for these parties to work on forming an “extra-parliamentary cabinet” or a “program cabinet,” fancy nonsense words for dementedly anti-democratic technocracy where the government is made up of party members and unelected elites—former politicians and “experts.” 

This is insane. This sounds like something out of the USSR because it is. They like to do this kind of thing in Italy a lot and it is always a failure. This next step in negotiations is being reported by the Dutch press as a “breakthrough” and “progress,” and discussed by party leaders as if it is normal, but make no mistake. It is insane—and unprecedented in the Netherlands. 

Kim Putters, the mediator for cabinet formation discussions (a former Labor party minister, and another unelected technocrat, by the way!), says he thinks an extra-parliamentary cabinet best suits the current climate.

There have been major political shifts. There is a lot of context to that. And I have to say: people rightly expect that a cabinet will soon be established that will effectively tackle social issues.

This attitude suggests that it’s critical to form a cabinet, any kind of cabinet, even if it’s made up of random neoliberal or far-right cronies—which the “experts” will inevitably be. 

I just want to make this perfectly clear: half of the people running the government will be unelected. They will have no popular mandate. They will have no accountability to the public.

What is going on here? The cabinet formation process has been ugly, plagued by walkouts, reports of infighting, and party leaders bitching at each other on social media. In other words: the only parties that can make form a cabinet openly hate each other. That these people can’t work or govern together does not mean that we should hire randos to do their jobs.

Why don’t they call new elections? There have been “major political” shifts, as Putters said, and new elections would clarify where amongst elected officials the balance of power should rest. That is the point of a democracy. If these elected officials turn out to be far-right twats—and indeed the latest post-election polls show Wilders' PVV party gaining ground—that’s just sometimes the way things in a democracy works, especially in the Netherlands where there are so many parties and things can change so super fast. That’s the beauty of the system. There’s always another election, where the far-right twats are voted out for all of their far-right twattery —that is, as as long as the left can come up with a cohesive argument for why votes should be cast for them instead.

If the government is run by technocrats, voters are robbed of that opportunity. Anti-democratic technocratic rule might feel like a bulwark against the far-right in the short term, but recent history in Europe has shown that it only works to fuel the far-right in the medium term. If they go ahead with this plan, it’s only a matter of time before someone even farther-right than Wilders starts wailing that “elites are running the country,” which was his plan in the first place. Things will get even worse. 

The purpose of phenomenally long Dutch cabinet negotiations sessions (the last one took 299 days) is to hammer out super detailed agreements in advance of formation so that the cabinet can govern efficiently once installed. In theory. This apparent consensus that hammering things out even if that means smashing democracy into a million pieces is absolutely short-sighted and naive. It doesn’t matter what the “experts” say, and this is precisely why the “experts” should not be in charge. 

What’s the left up to? Not much! I suppose it wouldn’t be very Dutch for Frans Timmermans, the leader of Green/Labor party to be flipping out, but he should be flipping the fuck out. All he’s saying is that an “extra-parliamentary” cabinet is just a majority cabinet by another name. And he won't negotiate with Wilders. Fine. Yawn. Put up a fight!

And also, for Christ’s sake, who’s going to be the first Dutch prime minister who is not Mark Rutte since 2010? No one has any idea! Under the current plan it will be some random individual chosen by party leaders? That is insane.

And finally, the most insane thing of all: Wilders, a supposed far-right populist, is stepping aside to ensure that a right-wing technocratic cabinet—perhaps the least populist form of government imaginable—is installed. If he were a true populist he would be the one putting up a fight. But he’s not, because he isn’t. He’s an opportunistic far-right twat.

And most importantly for the future of the Netherlands, all of the genuine sentiments that attracted so many voters to Wilders’ twattery aren’t going anywhere just because because a couple of “experts” have decided that putting other “experts” in charge will make it so.

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🥳 Leuke Dingetjes

You live here long enough and you start to forget that the easiness of getting around didn’t just magically happen. h/t Kottke.org

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*all typos in this post are on purpose