Muslims, immigrants, public charges or not?

Muslim and other immigrants a boon to the receiving nation?

Yesterday IslaminEurope - Commentary featured a story on the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) asking Dutch Ministers to calculate the costs and revenues of immigration. Later yesterday there was a vote on the issue. All parties were against Dutch Departments to calculate the revenues and costs associated with immigration. All parties apart from the Liberal-Conservative VVD, Wilders' old party.

There was a big show of moral indignation at PVV MP Sietse Fritsma's request. But it is clear that the PVV is not finished. During a speech in Parliament on 18 september last year Mr. Wilders (Dutch) said:

This Multicultural society is a expensive hobby. A Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) study of a few years ago has shown that the average non-western immigrant family casts the Dutch taxpayer 230.000 euro.

The strategy of Mr. Wilders

The PVV is going to make this matter of whether immigrants are public charges the main issue in the rest of the year and leading up to the 2010 election. We have not heard the last of this.

The other parties are going to be in a lot of trouble over this. Them trying to keep the facts under wraps makes them look vicious and deceitful. And once the facts are out Multicultural society will have taken a crippling injury.

Freedom of Speech in The Netherlands

Freedom of Speech is important in orienting society

In a democratic society the people are involved in steering the Nation. This makes it important that the people can orient themselves on where the Nation has to go. In order to orient, there must be Freedom of Speech concerning all matters pertaining to the state of the Nation. If there is a narrow judicial elite which decides on what can and cannot be said it will be impossible for the people to know what issues are and so it is really those who set the boundaries of debate who set the course.

Multicultural society overwhelmed by disfunctionality and the Dutch backlash

Issues of disfunctionality of Dutch Multicultural Society could not be publicly addressed after limitations on the Freedom of Speech were initiated by lawmakers in 1983. This led to disfunctionality overwhelming the densely populated country, which has a cultural tradition of extreme bluntness and outspokenness. The dam burst in 2001 with the gains made by the populist Pim Fortuyn and his party. Mr. Fortuyn's assassination ended the immediate consequences of the power gained by him and his followers.

Running into the boundaries of Political Expression

Since then especially Mr. Geert Wilders has been fuelling the debate concerning the threat of Islam against The Netherlands. Mr. Wilders has run into the boundaries of Free Speech. Because the ability to speak one's mind is a important cultural value in The Netherlands, people is receiving more and more support from well educated Dutch citizens. They see him as a defender of their Freedom.

Stealing Wilders' Thunder

Mr. Wilder's old party, the Liberal-Conservative VVD is losing these affluent voters. Freedom of Speech is a value that fits well into their program and in late May, just before the European elections the VVD-leader Mark Rutte came out with a proposal to completely decriminalize speech.

Mr. Mark Rutte announced his proposal for full Freedom of Speech and was subsequently interviewed on Dutch TV show Knevel en van den Brink. During the interview Mr. Rutte defended full Freedom of Speech, including the Freedom of Imams to call gays inherently sinfull, similar to the homosexual Mr. Fortuyn, who had said:

Imams should have the freedom to call me a pig and I should have the freedom to call their religion backward.

A full transcript of the Freedom of Speech interview is at Danish blog Balder. Remarkably Mr. Rutte also said:

Well there are idiots who deny the holocaust, I would want to know who that is, then I can show them; boys, I got a whole library full of evidence, and there are still people alive who went through all those horrible things, or lost members of their family, let's look at the facts.

This was picked up by the media who made a lot of hay against Mr. Rutte and his idea to decriminalize political speech. Former VVD leader Bolkestein, Wilders' mentor, supported decriminalizing political speech on June 3rd. Mr. Rutte must have been thunderstruck when the Freedom Party (PVV) declared being against the freedom to deny the Holocaust! This most likely in order not to lose PVV's halo as a Pro-Israeli and generally Jew-friendly party.

In the end the hullabaloo died down within a few days. The PVV achieved a historic victory in the European elections on June 4th. And the VVD did not as badly as expected, so perhaps their move to protect Freedom of Speech did pay off after all. This possibility will not have escaped the political strategists at the headquarters of Dutch political parties, especially PVV and VVD. headquarters. It is therefore to be expected that support for Freedom of Speech will continue to be strong in the future.

Freedom Party's program moving into the mainstream

Making friends and influencing people

Political power is not just the power to be in government and to make laws and policy. It is about influencing society as a whole and in particular other political parties.

Addressing voter's concerns by offering alternatives

Under the reign of Liberalism the cartel of political parties would look the other way if certain phenomena ran counter to the dogma of radical egalitarianism. Parties would not be corrected by the voters, as voters were not offered policy alternatives. This was the situation before 2006 after the Fortuynists had destroyed themselves and before Geert Wilders formed his Freedom Party.

The level of Immigration

For instance, citizens concerned with the overwhelming numbers of immigrants coming to The Netherlands would not be able to express their concern through the ballot box. There was no party stating that immigration was a problem, and there was no party offering policy countering immigration.

The value of real opposition

With the election of the Freedom Party PVV to Dutch Parliament this has changed. The other parties have taken notice. The Liberal-Conservative VVD party is concerned about losing their voters to the PVV. To counter the threat they are copying a positions that the PVV has pioneered. However, they do this with a typical lack of conviction (Dutch). Perhaps they are testing the waters?

Giving the old right a right wing profile

The man who has to give the VVD a rightwinged profile again is Mr. Paul de Krom. Recently he took issue with a report by Minister Eduard van der Laan of Integration. Minister van der Laan presented to Parliament research by a thinktank of the Ministry of Justice, the WODC. This is the Research and Documentation Centre. The thinktank reported that the number of immigrants had fallen after 2001. After 2005 it rose again to a whopping 140.000 in 2008. This relative to a 16 million population.

This is mainly caused by labour migration from counties in Eastern Europe, whose citizens can enter without applying for a permit. The succesful policy against marriage migration from Turkey and Morocco is losing its effectiveness, particularly by Muslims finding brides from other Middle Eastern countries.

The thinktank says that the government has no real influence on the number of immigrants settling within the Dutch borders. And the Minister of Integration says that it will be impossible to integrate such numbers of immigrants.

Mr. De Krom said:

"The government is a restauration government. We are going back to the 90ies. Obviously nothing has been learned from Fortuyn".

The goal: assimilation of immigrant communities

Mr. De Krom has uttered other assimilationist remarks: closing Islamic schools, limiting benefits to migrants, no child support for polygamous families, no tax money to support pensions of immigrants, against influence of the Moroccan State on European politics, against the Burqa, calculating the expenses of the 2006 amnesty for asylum seekers, closing the borders to uneducated immigrants and outlawing the possibility of double nationality.

The goal of the VVD is assimilation. This is a departure of the Multiculturalist policy that all parties supported before 2001. The present centrist government is failing to defend the nation, despite the fact that it has inherited a toolbox of effective policies against migration.

The fact that other parties are adopting the rethoric of the Freedom Party shows the way to a new government coalition after the elections in 2010. Which would be the crown on Mr. Wilders' work since he left the VVD in 2006.

Verdonk not elected as VVD party leader

This news is just out.

Mrs. "hardline" Verdonk (Dutch) was not elected to party leader of the Liberal Conservative VVD. Instead Marc Rutte, the candidate put forward by the VVD hierarchy has been elected by the VVD membership.

This is in my opinion a positive development. Mrs. Verdonk does not have the necessary quality to operate on party leadership level.

Self defense - best defense

The battle between the contenders for the leadership of the VVD, the liberal-conservative party is getting fiercer and fiercer .

RITA VERDONK



Verdonk is working on sending back criminals from the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean. Antillians are strongly overrepresented in violent crime in the Netherlands. The 22 municipalities with a significant group of Antillians support (Dutch) Verdonk's plan to send back repeat offenders. Last Friday the council of judges warned that this might be against EU treaties. Citizens of the Dutch Antilles are automatically also citizens of The Netherlands, according to the 1954 Statute that shapes the legal relations between the Antilles and The Netherlands. The Dutch Antilles require strict policies against Dutch citizens who come to live on their islands, sending back people who are unemployed or criminal.



MARK RUTTE




In a response contender Mark Rutte is beefing up his law-and-order image. He is pushing for the right to selfdefense of house and shopowner's that are burglarised. Right now it is so that Dutch citizens who use violence against intruders are treated as criminals by the police and the courts. Rutte argues that the state should be on the side of the victims of crime and not on the side of the criminals. His argument was pasted in huge letters on the front page of the right-wing and populist "De Telegraaf" last Friday 21 April.

My take on it is that the leadership of the VVD is afraid that Rita Verdonk is not the right person to lead their party. Verdonk will split the party up. VVD Old-timer Nijpels has said
"I get the feeling that if she becomes the political leader (lijsttrekker), we will have taken on a walking disaster". The article in the "De Telegraaf" is the result of string pulling by VVD strategist to bolster the appeal of Mark Rutte. Verdonk is very popular with right-wing voters.

Still the struggle for the VVD leadership is good for the popularity of the party in the polls. The party is part of the ruling right-wing coalitions whose tight economic and fiscal policies are cauing hardship for parts of the Dutch population. Due to the lack of strong personalities in the political leadership the right wing was losing its popularity as was shown in the red flood rising in the municipal election on 7 March. The battle between Rutte and Verdonk seems to be countering that trend.

Mark Rutte
Rita Verdonk
Self Defense

Battle for Dutch Right-wing leadership heats up

The elections in 2007 are getting nearer and battles lines are being drawn.

A few days ago Rita Verdonk of the Liberal-Conservative VVD made her candidacy public for the position of election leader for the 2007 elections (lijsttrekker). The election to become lijsttrekker of the VVD will be held on 31 May and the 40.000 members of the VVD will be able to vote.

The vote contest is between Rita Verdonk, Mark Rutte (English) and Jelleke Veenendaal. Only Verdonk and Mark Rutte are serious candidates. Mark Rutte is the secretary of Education. It is not a position that gives one a clear profile. Verdonk is the hardline minister of Immigration and Intergration. She is a law and order politician, the law is the compass to which she sets her course.

With regards to Immigration and Intergration she has not set her own course, but carries out laws that have been drafted and adopted by Labour politicians. The present immigration laws notably have been drafted (English, third paragraph) by Job Cohen, the present Labour Mayor of Amsterdam. The difference between the Labour politicians and Rita Verdonk is that the latter strictly and narrowly carries out the law, including deporting thousands of asylum seekers.

The clear course that she steers has given her a strong profile and great popularity among that segment of the Dutch population bothered by immigration. She is also very unpopular among people who live in areas not touched by immigration or people who like or benefit from a multicultural society and open borders.

Several of the bosses of the Liberal-Conservative party are coming out against her. She has obviously upset the applecart of the people in charge of the Liberal Conservatives. It seems that her candidacy was a surprise to the old guard of the VVD.

Mrs. Verdonk is trying to positioning herself as a politician "who makes good on her promises". This is clearly a attempt to harvest in the furrow ploughed and sown by Pim Fortuyn. Her promise is credible. It fits her profile. She added to want to "save the Netherlands" from a disastrous Leftist government. This is a fear on the right wing, after the desastrous Municipal elections of March the Seventh which seemed to flow as a red river rising over the low countries.

Mark Rutte responded sharply to the hidden but intended barb against his lack of spine and conviction:

It is insulting to the [VVD] members that have to make an informed choice. I am not going to start mudslinging, but it is nonsense and damaging for the VVD.

What else could he say?

Hardline Verdonk will run for VVD leadership

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.