Listing to Starboard
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende is seen celebrating his Christian Democrat party's showing on election night
FRED ERNST/AP
Wednesday, Sep. 11, 2002
"Respect your fellow citizens — or else," says Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. "Teachers should slap the faces of children who misbehave in class," says Economics Minister, Herman Heinsbroek. These kinds of remarks are not typically expected from politicians in the Netherlands, which has always had a reputation as an ultra-liberal society that approves of euthanasia, gay marriage and soft drugs. But these are, in fact, the latest proposals from the new Dutch coalition government, made up of the Christian Democrats (CDA), the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVF) and List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), the party of the charismatic politician slain last May.
It required two months for the three parties in the coalition to find enough to agree on to form a government — few other Dutch governments have ever taken this much time. This could be attributed to the fact that the LPF, which boasts the largest number of seats of any party in parliament, has the smallest number of experienced politicians. The LPF candidates included a former fashion model, a corporate accountant, and a number of businessmen who contributed to the campaign.
The LPF originally insisted on choosing a prime minister and a justice minister, but its partners would not agree to the formation of such a power block. In the end, to form a government the LPF agreed to allow a CDA prime minister and a VVF Justice minister, while the LPF took the Finance, Economic Affairs, Immigration, and Health ministries, along with a few less visible posts. Despite this positioning, the LPF has dominated the coalition, largely through tough talk on the hottest issues — talk that has received plenty of media coverage, so much that opposition politicians have publicly demanded "an end to the floating of trial balloons." But the Dutch public has been eager for tough talk — the slogan "An end to the conspiracy of silence" was one of Fortuyn's most popular. "Many of us feel that the last government was ignoring our problems," says Rob de Jong, 46, who owns a kitchen showroom in Amsterdam.
The current debate came to a head at the end of last month when Minister for Immigration, Hilbrand Nawijn, a member of the LPF, proposed that a convicted criminal — a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin — should be deported. He further suggested that other criminals of foreign origin holding Dutch passports, along with all other foreign criminals without Dutch nationality, should be sent out of the country too. "We have the right to protect ourselves, and the Dutch constitution allows us this right," Nawijn insisted in a parliamentary debate. Nawijn also proposed that anyone arrested on suspicion of committing a crime should be deprived the right to remain silent.
The remarks aroused the ire of many Dutch politicians, who said the proposals were unconstitutional and illegal. "This goes too far," said Dik Wolfson, spokesman for the opposition Social Democrats. "It is an incomprehensible, ill-considered remark." All of the opposition parties have stated their determination to fight the proposed legislation.
Thomas Spijkerboer, a professor of immigration law at the Free University of Amsterdam, disagrees. Though conceding that Nawijn's proposals could not be implemented under Dutch law in the informal way that he has described them, Spikerboer did not rule out that the proposals could be couched in formal legal terms and legitimized under Dutch constitutional law.
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, from the moderate Christian Democrat party, has accepted some of Nawijn's ideas, albeit with nuances. "It is not impossible [to deport a Dutch citizen of foreign origin]," Balkenende said in a parliamentary debate this week. "It needs to be studied." Though "It is wrong to create any kind of special status for any Dutch citizen," he said, he concurred that "our citizens should respect each other, and those who do not ... should be dealt with."
Other ministers from the LPF have also entered the fray. "It's time we brought back some family values," said Economics Affairs Minister Herman Heinsbroek, a multimillionaire former businessman. Heinsbroek proposed that the government finance a public relations campaign in support of what he called "traditional norms." "I'd like to see people on the bus give their seats to the aged and the infirm," he said. "It's also time there was greater respect for teachers in the classrooms." Heinsbroek also proposed that teachers should have the right to slap the faces of children who misbehave, a practice banned in the Netherlands in the early 1960s. "Many older people remember this practice," says Joop Nederstigt, 61, a media consultant in Aalsmeer, "but I don't think anyone ever wanted to see it revived."
Balkenende may not like these LPF proposals, but given the fact that the LPF is the largest party in the coalition there's not much he can do about it. Balkenende may be hoping that internal differences within the new party will cause it to fall apart — its first leader, Matt Heben, had to retire less than a month after being elected to parliament. "No one can say how long all these amateurs will last under the pressures of real politics," Nederstigt points out.
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