Today Minister Verdonk of Immigration and Intergration made public to be run for the leadership of the Liberal-Conservative VVD party.
Verdonk is famous and infamous for her hardline management of the Immigration portfolio. She is hated on the Left who try to besmirch her as much as possible. She is also the only popular member of the right-wing coalition that has been governing The Netherlands since 2003 and gets lots of fanmail from the public. Verdonk has executed the policy of extraditing large numbers of illegals and 26.000 asylum seekers who had been turned down. In my opinion Verdonk has a good chance to win against the other leadership candidates Mark Rutte and unknown quantity Jelleke Veenendaal. Verdonk is popular because she keeps her word and does what she says.
The leadership position of the VVD came available after the desastrous municipal elections on March 7. VVD leader Van Aartsen stepped down.
National elections will be held in 2007.
This week Marko Pastors of Leefbaar Rotterdam (Livable Rotterdam) also announced to run nationally. This means there will be 3 contenders for on the rightwing. Verdonk, Pastors and Geert Wilders. Getting busy! The split right wing may mean loss of strength for the Right. But it will also mean that rightwing ideas will get more space in the media, which will be necessary education for the Dutch public.
2 comments:
The split right wing may also mean MORE votes for the right because of differences in nuance, the different leaders of the parties, which may appeal to a wider audience.
And that in turn may mean that the electoral gain for the Left wing during the last local elections was not so much a new spring for the Left, but more like a sunny day in the left wing autumn season. Seeing three strong candidates for the Dutch Right is good news indeed!
I like this news. What I've read of Pastors is excellent so far. There may end up being a split in the Republicn party here in the States with some of the hard-liners on immigration having some great fights with other Republicans, including Bush, on this issue. These next two years will be interesting to watch politically for both the Netherlands and the US.
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