Friday, November 14, 2008

Minister of Neighbourhoods and Assimilation is forced to step down

Ella Vogelaar too weak

Yesterday evening Dutch Minister Ella Vogelaar (Labour) of Assimilation and Neighbourhoods was forced to step down. The head of the Labour Party publicly concluded that Minister Vogelaar was too weak and had no authority.

Crime register

The immediate cause of the Minister's downfall was her giving in to politicians from the Dutch Antilles to have the ethnicity of Antillians logged in a special crime register, for better exchange of information on highly criminal Antillian youth. Dutch Parliament had demanded the register for two years.

Former Communist Ella Vogelaar had been a weak Minister since she had accepted her Ministerhood of the newly created policy taskforce. The idea of the policy taskforce had been to address the trouble attending non-western immigrants in The Netherlands by improving the neighbourhoods that contain large numbers of non-westerners.

A string of mistakes

The Minister's many mistakes were summed up by Dutch columnist Syp Winia: "stating that Burqas are cool, Islam enriches The Netherlands, stating everything will sort itself out in time, providing free assimilation courses to immigrants and blaming ethnic Dutch for the troubles of non-western immigrants".

The political class becomes more aligned with the nation

The downfall of the Minister shows that the presence of large numbers of non-western immigrants has gone from a liability for the nation and a boon to the political class to a liability to both the nation and the political class.

That is an improvement.

The king is dead, long live the king

Amsterdam Labour Party (PvdA) stalwart and laywer Eberhard van der Laan of the firm of Kennedy en van der Laan attorneys will succeed Mrs. Vogelaar as Minister of the taskforce for Assimilation and Neighbourhoods.

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