Day 2 - Delft: The Dutch Election Night

June 9th was the Dutch Election.
I'm lucky enough to have friends that are very involved in politics here in the Netherlands. So I got to go to a small bar in Delft with Lasslo and watch the results roll in with members of the SP (Socialist Party). That was an experience and a half I have to say.

After a lovely dinner at De Waag behind Delft City Hall, Marike took Femke home and Lasslo and I continued on to a (very) small tavern to watch the elections on Dutch Public TV (which is digitally received by antennae and played on a computer--very cool). Lasslo is a member of the Socialist Party, along with his brother-in-law, Stijn, and father-in-law, Leo. There were about 13 others present to watch the results with us.

While people were commenting on the speeches politicians gave or the preliminary poll estimates, Lasslo gave me a break down of Dutch Politics. The electoral system is proportional representation. So make-up of parliament is decided based on the percentage of votes that each party gets. With 150 seats in parliament, you need 75 seats plus 1 to hold the majority. This normally means that parties have to form coalitions in order to create a majority in Parliament.
There are about 18 political parties, but the main ones are:

• CDA - Christian Democratic Appeal (Wiki) - A centre-right group that has held the largest part of the coalitions in the last four governments. Their ex-leader, Jan Peter Belkenende, was prime minister of the last four government. None of those governments ever finished an entire term without an early election being called. They didn't do so well this election and may not be apart of the new coalition. Lasslo commented that people tend to be disappointed with this government because of its long run and because it was in power before and during the recent financial crisis.
  
  
• PvdA - Labour Party (Wiki) - A centre-left party that was the second member in the last coalition. They withdrew their support from the government over Afghanistan in February, causing this election (Thanks guys!! It made my life waaaaay more exciting!)
  
  
• SP - Socialist Party (Wiki) - Like I mentioned above, Lasslo, Stijn, and Leo are all members of this party. According to Lasslo, they've been doubling their numbers over the last 4 elections. Unfortunately, they lost a number of seats this election.
  
  
• PVV - The Party for Freedom (Wiki) - This right wing party is one of the most interesting to me. It's very subtly--and at the same time, not so subtly--racist. They have very strong views about keeping Dutch culture rooted in Judeo-Christian values and are openly anti-Islamic. The PVV is extremely conservative when it comes to immigration, taxation, minimum wage and numerous other political points.
  
  
• ***VVD - The People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (Wiki) - This is the (both socially and economically) liberal party. They were the second largest opposition party before the election, and unlike I previously mentioned, they're now the largest party in the Netherlands. It is likely that they will have the next Prime Minister. (Thanks Marike and Lasslo!)
  
  
• D66 - Democrats 66 (Wiki) - This is a more left leaning party whose platform I quite liked, however they didn't receive extremely high numbers in the polls.

Anyways, now that you have some back ground information (I'm not going to mention the Party for the Animals--sorry Leya. You're kitties will have to start their own party), I can get on with the story.

Sitting in this little tavern was very cool. It seemed just like the way I had always imagined organizing a socialist party would go (Only those who have been to a Habonim Dror camp can fathom having fantasies about organizing a socialist party). It was a tiny room with a large table in the centre. Everyone had a beer and comfortable t-shirt with jeans or other casual pants. Everyone was jabbering on in Dutch about other political parties and what their candidates had said. The woman beside me (Francine? I think?) seemed to be one of the funniest in a room. She always had a joke about something. She made fun of Lasslo, whose responsibility in the Delft chapter of the party for this election was to put up signs around Den Hoorne. Unfortunately, he forgot one major billboard just outside his house and he didn't hear the end of it.

The best joke of the night had to be when the the previous Prime Minister, Jan Balkenende, resigned from his position of Chairman of the CDA. The newscasters were examining the likelihood of which Party Leader would become Prime Minister. The screen showed the layout of the Dutch House of Parliament in the Hague and zoomed in on the Prime Minister's desk. Above the desk were a picture of each of the candidates. The newscaster would go through, discussing their levels of support and different coalition structures. When he got to the picture of Balkenende, he waved his hand and the chair was whisked off screen while he said something something along the lines of "not even worth discussing, the guy just quit. No chance for him sucker!" (I don't understand Dutch very well, so that's an approximation based on body language and tone...)

Needless to say, the obviously comedic animation of the Prime Minister's chair being whisked away was one of the highlights of the night, along with one of the northern electoral districts having 123% voter turn out. "That happens a lot in developing nations and apparently in the Netherlands!" said Bob, the chairman of the SP-Delft.

Watching the passion of the people in the room (especially for when they cheered upon discovering they had 1 more seat than originally thought) made me miss the passion I used to feel for politics when I was in my senior years of high school. I used to criticize every decision the government made, wondering about its consequences upon foreign relations, the economy and the domestic population. There was a time when I wouldn't make excuses for the government making an undesired decision, but now I feel like I can always find political justification for policies--even if I don't agree with them. It's this attitude that leads to apathy--a sense that nothing you do matters. Even voting.

I was a little bit ashamed to talk to Lasslo and his friends at the Socialist party about elections in Canada. I told them how I was bored of my options of 4 parties (I include the Greens because they FINALLY got someone into the House of Commons). But the NDP and Green Party will never be able to hold major office and the Liberals and Conservatives are so similar in their legislative goals with only the details in the lettering and the level of support from different kinds of business being the differing factors between parties. (After reading this over, that statement is pretty incorrect, but my point is that the differences between the two parties are quite slight). I almost feel like I wouldn't vote in the next federal election, because it almost doesn't matter who gets in--Canada's overall political character isn't strongly affected by the party in power today (historically is another story).

We also discussed proportional representation. I was jealous that the Netherlands had a PR electoral system. When the debate over PR (actually, a hybrid system that incorporated PR) was raised in BC and in Ontario last year, I supported it for both, but both times it was shot down and the old first-past-the-post systems were kept in place. I like the PR system for two reasons.

First, it's more exciting politically. That may be selfish but it would make Canadian politics a lot more interesting.
Second, it easily allows more political parties to grow and flourish. I don't find myself drawn to any party in Canada at the moment. I feel that none of them meet my needs and I can't really be passionate about any of their platforms.

The problem with PR, some would say, is the coalition governments that are born out of the system. In Canada, that was the big stopper--people are afraid of the coalition governments because, as the system stands, they aren't very long-lasting or reliable. But if you look at many flourishing democracies around the world, they all function with PR systems: the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Brazil. And many function just fine with coalition governments.

Anyways, to focus back on this party and to prevent me from going on a political rampage, I was also struck by the bluntness of the PVV. This right-wing party openly denounces Islam and claims to resist Islamization. The leader, Geert Wilders, announced that he vows to minimize Islam throughout the Netherlands. Now, this may be a dangerous and unfair comparison, but his comments sounded very much like a certain 1930s-40s Social Democrat from Germany who ended up plunging Europe and subsequently the rest of the world into a history-altering, catastrophic war. Now I'm not saying that Wilders could be the next Hitler, but I feel like that kind of sentiment in politics creates a breeding ground for the kind of racism that split the world down the middle and plunge us into the next world war. It would be between the Islamic East and the Secular/Christian West.

Those comments reminded me about my paper on Turkey and my research that showed an increase in anti-Islamic sentiment across Europe. Bob (the SP-Delft Chairman) believes that Turkey will be a part of the EU in the next 10 years, but at the rate that Europe is becoming more intolerant of immigrants (like in France and apparently the Netherlands, judging by the recent election), I find that a very optimistic forecast. Personally, I think that the accession process will be drawn out indefinitely in an attempt to wait out the intolerance, which will cause Turkey to withdraw away from Europe and turn to more conservative Islamist government. But that's just me.

I still don't know the exact results of the election, because they are making deals behind closed doors right now to create a coalition government who would hold the majority in Parliament. Nothing has been released yet as far as I know.

Sorry this post was rather beige and filled with politics, but this is something important for the people to think about that they wouldn't normally be exposed to. I certainly enjoyed myself.

And for those of you who thought this was boring, here is a picture of Femke in a clog. How very Dutch!