Christian democrats dragged along kicking and screaming

No to Wilders

According to Esther at IslaminEurope a group of Christian Democrats (CDA) is opposing the deal with the Anti-Islamic Freedom Party (PVV). As a part of their efforts they are collecting signatures of CDA-members on a website (Dutch).

The big picture

However, a poll taken by Maurice de Hond shows that 78 percent of those who voted CDA support a deal with the PVV. Out of 65,000 members 330 signed the petition of the hardcore multiculturalists. The results become more relevant if we assume that only active members voted for the petition. Active members are 10 percent of party members generally in The Netherlands. 330 out of 6,500 active members is roughly five percent.

The rotten party system

Before this blog featured a post on our rotten party system in The Netherlands. Members are active in parties because they want jobs in the party or in the administration. There are 12,000 political offices in the administration and 15,000 paid party slots to divvy up between the active party members of whom there are in total about 300,000. Ten percent or 30,000 of them are active members so there is a job for nearly everyone. But the only way for a party to be able to reward its active core with an paid appointment is by being part of a government. So the CDA has little choice, now that there is a possibility of a rightwing government. They have to be in this government, or the main reason why they are able to recruit members wil fall away.

Doomed anyway

The hardcore multiculturalist five percent may kick and scream but most of them will go along. That is until the CDA has been made irrelevant by the Scylla of secularisation and the Charybdis of the rise of the PVV.