Christian democrat Klink stops kicking and screaming

End of a career

Last Friday the news came out, that the negotiations for a right wing cabinet of right liberals (VVD), Christian-Democrats (CDA) with tacit support of the populist Freedom Party (PVV) ended in failure. Negotiations were given up after Ab Klink, a CDA MP and one of two negotiators on the CDA team, had sent a letter to his party leadership in which he articulated his principled opposition to collaboration with a populist party such as the PVV. Apart from Ab Klink two other CDA MPs were opposed to any political alliance with the PVV, no matter how informal.   

This resulted in PVV-leader Geert Wilders asking for assurances in writing that all CDA MPs would fully support the settlement or agreement that was to be reached in order to from a coalition government. The CDA negotiating team, from which Mr. Klink had already been removed  refused to do so. At this point the unreliability of the CDA as a possible coalition partner had become fully exposed. The PVV then broke off the negotiations.

Taking the consequences

Mr. Ab Klink understood that he had become unreliable in the eyes of possible political partners of the CDA. That he had become a liability to his party. Today he stopped being a CDA MP and if I understand things correctly he will be replaced by someone with a lower ranking on the CDA list of MPs. Mr. Klink did express  (Dutch) that the reason for him leaving Parliament was that he had become unreliable in te eyes of others.

Now that Klink is gone there are still two left in the CDA parliamentary fraction, who are opposed to co-operation with the PVV, as Geert Wilders noticed. He reacted non-committally:

we will see were this takes us

Apparently he does not see a reason to rush into new negotiations.

Ab Klink was a protege of Mr. Hirsch Ballin, who is the Minister of Justice. Under Hirsch Ballins the public prosecutor of the Court of Amsterdam has indicted Geert Wilders for political offenses, such as "hate speech" and "discrimination". In my view the forces behind the case against Wilders, which will resume in October, have been weakened by the set back or perhaps end of the career of Ab Klink.