VVD – 20,5 procent, 1926551 stemmen, 31 zetels

PvdA – 19,6 procent, 1847776 stemmen, 30 zetels

PVV – 15,5 procent, 1453944 stemmen, 24 zetels

CDA – 13,6 procent, 1281137 stemmen, 21 zetels

SP – 9,8 procent, 924977 stemmen, 15 zetels

D66 – 6,9 procent, 653265 stemmen, 10 zetels

GroenLinks – 6,7 procent, 627912 stemmen, 10 zetels

ChristenUnie – 3,3 procent, 305628 stemmen, 5 zetels

SGP – 1,7 procent, 163512 stemmen, 2 zetels

Partij voor de Dieren – 1,3 procent, 122257 stemmen, 2 zetels

Trots op Nederland – 0,6 procent, 52735 stemmen, 0 zetels

Partij voor Mens en Spirit – 0,3 procent, 26224 stemmen, 0 zetels

Piratenpartij – 0,1 procent, 10570 stemmen, 0 zetels

Lijst 17 – 0,1 procent, 7440 stemmen, 0 zetels

Partij Een – 0,0 procent, 2087 stemmen, 0 zetels

HeelNL – 0,0 procent, 1343 stemmen, 0 zetels

Lijst Lacle, 0,0 procent, 949 stemmen, 0 zetels

To many abroad Mr Wilders, a Dutch MP, appears an old-fashioned racist whose views put him on a par with other far-Right politicians elsewhere in Europe.

Yet in its first ever test of national electoral support among the normally tolerant Dutch, his anti-immigration Party for Freedom which he founded in 2006 won 17 per cent of the votes – making it the second biggest party. That has shaken the country to its core – opening up the real possibility that, through the Dutch coalition system, Mr Wilders could win power at the next general election.

Now, like many others in the Netherlands, the Bernards are desperately worried. “This has the feeling of what happened to Germany in the 1930s,” said Alfred Bernard, 52, a lawyer. “Wilders blames foreigners for everything. People are disoriented because of the economic crisis. Everywhere there is dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians.

“After this I really believe that Wilders could become prime minister in the 2011 parliamentary elections, or at least set the political agenda.”

Source: Telegraph, Nick Meo in Rotterdam

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Wilders, 45, was frank about that ambition. Asked about the prospect of taking power in two years’ time, he said: “That is our biggest job. We had an enormous success last week and our biggest task is to keep up momentum. I am very confident that we will have an excellent result.

“If my party becomes the biggest party, I would be honoured to be prime minister.” Sitting in his office in the Dutch parliament building in The Hague, protected from the threat of assassination by 10 armed secret service bodyguards, he summed up his antipathy to the religion of many immigrants to the Netherlands.

“Islam wants to dominate our society,” he said in fluent and only slightly accented English. “It’s in opposition to freedom. “If people are offended, that’s not my aim. I don’t talk about Muslims but about Islam. Everything I say is against the fascist Islamic ideology.”

To the charge that to many his views appeared to be racist, he responded: “If that was true, we would never have been the second biggest party in the European elections.”

Why, then, did Moroccans and Turks living in the Netherlands so fear him? “As long as they don’t commit crimes, it’s a baseless fear,” he said. “If you adhere to our laws, if you act according to our values, you are free to stay. We will help you to integrate.

“But if you cross the red line, if you start committing crimes, if you want to do jihad or impose sharia, we want you to be sent out of the Netherlands and we will get rid of your permits to stay.”

An admirer of Churchill and Lady Thatcher, he is charismatic as well as combative. Holland’s conventional politicians – mostly dull men in suits – have no idea how to counter his politically incorrect taunts, which outrage the parliamentary chamber but delight his supporters.

He has come a long way since the days when he could be lightly dismissed as an eccentric fringe politician with an extraordinary blond quiff, known mainly for baiting Muslims.

“Half of Holland loves me and half of Holland hates me. There is no in-between,” Mr Wilders said. “This is a new politics, and I think it would have a great chance of success in other European countries. We are democrats. On economic and social issues we are centrist. We want tougher laws on crime and we want to stop Holland paying so much money to the European Union.

“We would stop immigration from Muslim countries and close Islamic schools. We want to be more proud of our identity.”

He admitted that he is frustrated at his image abroad, especially in Britain, a country which he admires. He claimed to believe in freedom above all else and pointed out that he is despised by Holland’s Neo-Nazis, who dubbed him the “blond Zionist” because of his links to Israel – a country which he has often visited and where he counts politicians among his friends.

He is still angered at being banned from entering Britain, where he had been invited to show his controversial 17-minute film linking the Koran with the September 11 terror attacks. Muslim groups were among those who campaigned against his admission, and he dismissed the Home Office ruling as an attempt at “appeasement” of Islam.

Dutch liberals groaned when the British Government refused entry, because they knew Mr Wilders would milk the decision to generate massive publicity at home. He is also being prosecuted in Holland for promoting hate crimes, a case which is thought unlikely to succeed but which has allowed him to pose as a martyr.

In the European Parliament his four MEPs will not ally with the British National party, he said, claiming he had never met a BNP Member. “I understand they talk a lot about blacks and whites. This is disgusting,” he said.

Then a dreamy look of a man convinced of his own destiny came into his eyes as he launched into a fresh tirade about the threat to Western civilisation from Islam. “Samuel Huntingdon was being too positive when he talked about a clash of civilisations,” Mr Wilders said. “It is civilisation against barbarity.”

His conviction explains why families like the Bernards, who know what happened next door in Germany during the 1930s, find Mr Wilders so unsettling.

In the past, the Bernards always had confidence in the post-war Dutch dream of equality and tolerance. But now Mr Bernard and his librarian wife Marjina, also 52, have been forced to ask whether their country is fundamentally changing.

The day after the results were announced, Mrs Bernard joined a mainstream political party for the first time in her life because she thinks that if Mr Wilders is to be opposed, ordinary politics must first be revived.

“It is getting scary,” she said. “He is becoming more extreme. He has made it respectable to speak out against Muslims.”

They live in an airy ground-floor flat in a neat suburb of Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest port with a population of 580,000, about four out 10 of whom are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. On current birth rates, the city is expected to become Europe’s first with a Muslim majority in about 2020. That has put it firmly at the centre of Holland’s anguished debate about race, immigration and Islam – a debate which is apparently being won by Mr Wilders.

The young watch his irreverent attacks on YouTube, relishing the novelty of a politician who can make them laugh. His older supporters are fiercely loyal to a leader who is bold enough to voice what they think, but for years dared not say.

“I voted for him because immigration isn’t working here in Holland any more,” said Ben De Reus, a 40-year-old bus driver from Rotterdam.

“He wants to get rid of the Turks and they don’t belong here,” said an elderly woman supporter in a prosperous southern suburb – wrongly, since Mr Wilders says he would “encourage” repatriation but wants the expulsion only of immigrants convicted of crimes.

Some 15 per cent of the Dutch population of 16.5 million are from ethnic minorities – many from Morocco and Turkey.

Most of the Party for Freedom’s 17 per cent of the vote was cast in Holland’s four big cities, where the immigrants live and where white voters grumble about high crime rates, chaotic foreigners who don’t understand orderly Dutch ways, and Muslim families who refuse to learn the language and fit in.

But it did well in parts of rural Holland too. It polled highest – 39.8 per cent – in Volderdam, a picturesque, overwhelmingly white town surrounded by windmills and tulip fields, where there are no burkhas but tourists queue up to take photos of women in clogs.

His rhetoric has delighted many voters, the ones who fear that their beloved Dutch values are under attack from an alien way of life.

Dutch tolerance has shaped the Party of Freedom to be quite unlike most European Right-wing movements: its election campaigning championed the victims of gay-bashing gangs of Moroccan youths, and Mr Wilders talks often about the threat from Islam to women’s rights.

His success is a sign of how the political landscape has changed. Even Dutch left-wingers now have to admit that there is a problem with Moroccan street gangs are a problem, and liberals wring their hands about the failure of immigrants to integrate since the first were admitted during the 1960s and 70s – many from Morocco and Turkey.

“Everybody assumed that immigrants would go home once they had finished their work here. But instead they stayed and brought their families,” said Rita Van Der Linde, a spokeswoman for the Rotterdam municipality.

The city’s large Moroccan population have found jobs harder to come by in recent years. Unemployed, and often feeling unwelcome, they have become more Islamic and retreated to the security of the mosques in their communities, in the older, scruffier parts of the city where they are isolated from mainstream Dutch life.

“This development has made white Dutch people nervous of them, especially since September 11th 2001,” Ms Van Der Linde said.

Hopes for harmony on the streets have been invested in a new mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a member of the Dutch Labour Party whose parents came from Morocco.

He has broken with multiculturalism by urging immigrants to learn the language and fit in, or get on a plane out. He has also pledged to crack down on Moroccan criminals, using language which Right-wingers say would get them branded as racists if they used it.

But in office he has tried to remain aloof from the fray, leaving the field almost clear for Mr Wilders to argue against immigration, which in reality has slowed to a trickle.

Not everyone believes there is enough substance to the Party of Freedom for it to have a chance of achieving real power.

In a little café in Rotterdam which proudly serves only traditional Dutch dishes, owner Martin Voltuees, 46, said of Mr Wilders: “He has a lot of good one-liners but no solutions. We have always been a culture of immigrants ever since the Jews arrived. The difference is that in the past people brought their skills, but now we have immigrants who just bring their poverty.

“Twenty years ago there were plenty of jobs in Rotterdam in the shipyards, and we needed them. That’s gone now. But you see in Holland black and white, Muslims and Christians, intermarrying, so perhaps these problems are solving themselves.”

Others are less sanguine – not least the Dutch citizens who feel themselves to be under fire.

Omar Kirac, 19, an engineering student at a Rotterdam university whose Turkish parents moved to the Netherlands before he was born, said: “Wilders hates people like me, and of course I hate him. I voted against him – it was the blond people who voted for him.

“We think he could become the prime minister and that would be dangerous for us, and dangerous for the Netherlands.

“Politicians need to focus on the economic crisis, not blame Muslims for everything.”

VVD- 32 (22)

CDA-27 (41)

PVV-17 (9)

GroenLinks- 10 (7)

D66- 12 (3)

SP- 10 (25)

ChristenUnie- 6 (6)

SGP- 2 (2)

PvdD- 2 (2)

Ton/Verdonk- 1 (1)

Bron: internetpeiling van De Hond onder 3000 mensen, uit een steekproef onder ruim 40.000 personen. De peildag was maandag 26 april 2010, na de verkiezingscongressen van de VVD, PvdA en PVV.

Edward A. Grefe - adjunct professor and director of Community Advocacy at George Washington University

April 19, at the 2010 Public Affairs Convention in The Hague, Netherlands one of the fine key note speakers is adjunct professor and director of Community Advocacy at George Washington University, Professor Edward Grefe. He will address his audience of Dutch public affairs professionals with his original insights on grassroots politics and strategic management of issues.

pa-cc’s Director Michiel Krijvenaar has met Edward Grefe at a session on grass roots at the GWU in november 2001, as he participated in a weeks’ professional visit by a small group of Dutch PA professionals to Washington DC. They kept in touch over the years and now Ed Grefe is a commited watcher of pa-cc’s activities. And a close friend as well.

Ed Grefe has spent more than 40 years in communications and politics. He has been a journalist, legislative aide, political strategist, corporate public affairs executive, entrepreneur, grassroots organizer, fund raiser, and relational database innovator. He has handled more than 250 campaigns and has been hailed by the prestigious Public Affairs Council as “the inventor of corporate grassroots programs.”

Ed started his career with The Washington Post and continued his early journalism with The Baltimore News American for which he wrote a front-page series in 1964 on the city’s reading problems. In the late 1960s he worked for three Members of Congress: Jack McDonald, R-MI; Bill Widnall, R-NJ; and Tom Curtis, R-MO. His staff work for Widnall and Curtis included housing and tax issues.

His political campaigns have also included candidates for the U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, Governor, Mayor, other legislative offices, and one presidential exploratory committee. He has handled campaigns in foreign countries, as well, including Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, and France. He has raised millions of dollars for the many candidates he represented, and for three universities: the University of Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins University, and Teachers College of Columbia University.

Ed’s corporate experience includes launching the headquarters public affairs office for Philip Morris Inc. in 1975, which led to his being named Vice President Public Affairs for Philip Morris USA in 1977; and managing advertising for Wolf Trap Farm for the Performing Arts in the 1971. He also established two businesses: E. A. Grefe & Associates, which he later sold, and International Civics which he co-created and led for 18 years before joining Legislative Demographic Services (LDS), which was purchased in 2006 by Aristotle International. Ed serves as Senior Political Strategist for AI clients.

Ed’s two books – Fighting to Win: Business Political Power and The New Corporate Activism – are seminal texts on corporate participation in the political process. And his many articles and book chapters on grassroots politics and issues management were the first to explain how to identify, mobilize, and motivate grassroots constituents in order to win elections and raise money – from training volunteers as leaders to database mining and micro-targeting.

Ed first taught at the Institute of Politics and Government at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock in the 1970s. In the 1980s he taught the first course offered jointly by the Public Relations Society of America and New York University on “Using Computers in Public Relations and Public Affairs,” and later co-created GAMBIT, the first relational database management system designed exclusively for grassroots organizing.

In 1996, Ed started teaching two courses at The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management: “Grassroots Politics” and “Managing Strategic Political Issues.” He has also been a guest lecturer since 2004 at Leiden University at its Campus Den Haag, and regularly lectures at universities in Austria, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru, and Bolivia. He also serves as GSPM’s Director of External Affairs and directs the school’s new Certificate in Community and Grassroots Advocacy. Ed received his B.A. from The Catholic University of America.

De Tweede Kamerleden Boris van der Ham (D66) en Ineke van Gent (GroenLinks) willen het reglement van orde van de Tweede Kamer veranderen, zodat de nieuwe procedure al na de komende verkiezingen van 9 juni in praktijk kan worden gebracht.

In de eerste vergadering van de nieuw gekozen Tweede Kamer, donderdag 17 juni 2010, zou het debat over de uitslag van de verkiezingen moeten plaatsvinden om een kandidaat-formateur of informateur aan te wijzen, die vervolgens nog formeel wordt benoemd door de koningin.

Van der Ham constateert dat de formaties van de afgelopen jaren veel complexer waren dan vroeger en dat het aanwijzen van een (in)formateur een steeds politiekere beslissing wordt. ‘Zo’n besluit is al snel omstreden en de koningin kan zich niet tegen mogelijke kritiek verdedigen. Daarom is het belangrijk dat de politiek het voortouw neemt’, stelt hij. Volgens het Kamerlid is ook nergens formeel vastgelegd dat de koningin het formatieproces begint.

Diverse commissies bepleitten in het verleden een andere werkwijze, maar dat kwam nooit van de grond. In 1971 nam de Tweede Kamer de motie-Kolfschoten aan waarin werd uitgesproken dat het parlement in een openbaar debat een formateur voordraagt. Maar destijds lukte dat al niet, omdat het parlement niet tot een meerderheidsoordeel kwam. Sindsdien zijn wel de adviezen van de fracties aan de koningin openbaar.

Bron: D66

De twee overgebleven regeringspartijen vormen dan ‘kabinet-Balkenende-V’ om samen door te gaan tot na vervroegde verkiezingen (9 juni 2010) een nieuw kabinet is gevormd. CDA en ChristenUnie gaan als demissionair kabinet verder en bereiden de Tweede Kamerverkiezingen voor.

‘Nieuwe gezichten’

CDA-minister Maxime Verhagen van Buitenlandse Zaken neemt de portefeuilles waar van Frans Timmermans (PvdA, staatssecretaris Buitenlandse Zaken) en Bert Koenders (Ontwikkelingsamenwerking) 

CDA-staatssecretaris Jan Kees de Jager (Financiën) wordt de nieuwe minister van Financiën, als opvolger van de opgestapte PvdA’er Wouter Bos.

ChristenUnie-staatssecretaris Tineke Huizinga die nu staatssecretaris van Verkeer en Waterstaat is volgt Jacqueline Cramer (PvdA) op als minister van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer.

CDA-minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin (Justitie) krijgt de portefeuille Binnenlandse Zaken bij zijn huidige portefeuille.

CU-minister André Rouvoet (Jeugd en Gezin) neemt OCW, na vertrek van Ronald Plasterk (PvdA).

CU-minister Eimert van Middelkoop (Defensie) neemt Wonen, Wijken en Integratie over van Eberhard van der Laan (PvdA).

Demissionair premier Jan Peter Balkenende legt dinsdag 23 februari om 16.00 uur een verklaring af over de ‘ontstane, politieke situatie’.

Beatrix consulteert maandag 22 februari 2010 haar vaste adviseurs – vicepresident van de Raad van State Herman Tjeenk Willink, Tweede Kamervoorzitter Gerdi Verbeet en Eerste Kamervoorzitter René van der Linden – en demissionair premier Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA)  en vicepremiers Wouter Bos (PvdA) en André Rouvoet (CU) over de ontstane situatie na de val van het kabinet.

De val

Op zaterdag 20 februari 2010 biedt minister-president Balkenende aan de Koningin het ontslag aa van de ministers en staatssecretarissen van de PvdA. De portefeuilles van de overige bewindspersonen zal hij ter beschikking stellen.

Verklaring van het kabinet

“Later vandaag zal ik aan Hare Majesteit de Koningin het ontslag aanbieden van de ministers- en staatssecretarissen van PvdA-huize. De portefeuilles, het ambt en de functies van de overige ministers en staatssecretarissen zal ik ter beschikking stellen. Als voorzitter van de ministerraad heb ik helaas moeten vaststellen dat een vruchtbaar pad ontbreekt waarlangs dit kabinet van CDA, PvdA en Christen Unie verder zou kunnen gaan.

U heeft de afgelopen dagen kunnen zien dat de eenheid werd aangetast door voldongen feiten. Door uitspraken die haaks staan op besluiten die het kabinet recent heeft genomen en aan de Kamer heeft gemeld. Die uitspraken legden een politieke hypotheek op het collegiaal overleg. Ze zijn zorgvuldigheid in de weg gaan staan. In de richting van onze mannen en vrouwen in Afghanistan. Maar ook in onze relatie met de NAVO-partners.

We hebben vandaag in de ministerraad verkend of het vertrouwen kon worden hersteld. Een herbevestiging van de afspraken die we tien dagen geleden in de Treveszaal maakten en in de kennisgevingsbrief aan de Kamer vastlegden zou een basis hebben gelegd voor een voortzetting van de samenwerking. Dan hadden de verantwoordelijke ministers een voor het kabinet bevredigende optie kunnen voorstellen – zo mogelijk voor 1 maart.

Voor een minderheid van het kabinet bleek dit een brug te ver. Waar vertrouwen ontbreekt, is een poging het over de inhoud eens te worden bij voorbaat tot mislukken gedoemd. Het betekent hooguit een opmaat naar nieuwe controverse in de toekomst. Zeker met de uitdagingen waar Nederland voor staat: die vragen niet om de makkelijke weg maar om daadkracht.

Het voortbestaan van een kabinet kan nooit een doel in zichzelf zijn. Het zou moeten gaan om werk en welzijn in Nederland – nu en in de toekomst. En om de bijdrage die Nederland in redelijkheid kan leveren aan een betere wereld. Die intentie hadden mijn collega’s en ik drie jaar geleden bij de start. We ervaren het collectief en individueel als een nederlaag dat we hierin zijn tekort geschoten. Maar dat verandert aan de feiten en de conclusie die we hebben moeten trekken niets.”

Bron: regeringsverklaring 20 februari 2010

Coalitie

CDA – 25 (41) + PvdA – 16 (33) + CU – 6 (6) = 47 (2006: 80)

Oppositie

SP – 14 (25)

VVD – 23 (21)

PVV – 26 (9)

GroenLinks – 13 (7)

D66 – 21 (3)

PvdD – 3 (2)

SGP – 2 (2)

TON – 1 (1)

In Nederland slikken 1,6 miljoen vrouwen de pil. Sinds 2008 zit de pil weer in het basispakket. Het schrappen van de vergoeding voor volwassenen levert een besparing van jaarlijks 58 miljoen euro op, een relatief klein bedrag in het licht van de grote tekorten in de zorg. Het Zorgverzekeringsfonds, waarin de premies van de zorgverzekering zitten, kampt met een tekort van naar schatting 1,1 miljard euro in 2009.

Het kabinet maakte tijdens de formatiebesprekingen in Beetsterzwaag de beslissing van het vorige kabinet om de pil uit het pakket te halen, ongedaan.

Het voorkomen van een zwangerschap is niet hetzelfde als het voorkomen van een ziekte, vindt het CVZ. Ook andere anticonceptiemiddelen, zoals condooms, vergoeden zorgverzekeraars niet standaard. Daarom zouden volwassenen zelf moeten betalen voor de pil (gemiddeld 5 euro per maand). Voor jongeren blijft de pil in het basispakket om tienerzwangerschappen en abortussen te voorkomen.