Nermin Aydemir JTW Columnist printable version send your friend message to author add comment ()

Friday, 9 January 2009

The Dutch are voting in the municipal elections on the 7^th March. Parties arrange meetings, deliver posts, talk with people in the street, etc to get electoral support as usual. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that the municipal elections takes a high priority in the agenda. The issue is not more popular than the bird flue or the cartoon case nowadays. Politicians seem rather concerned on the general elections, which will be held in 2007, than the elections next week. The Hague focuses on how to close the gap between political elite and the public and is still trying to figure out the puzzle of the LPF, List of Pim Fortuyn. As it is known, the movement of the extreme rightist political leader, Pim Fortuyn, got an important political support in the general elections of 2002 in the Netherlands. 17% of the electorates voted for LPF, and the party became one of the three partners of the coalition. Many were surprised since nobody expected that Fortuyn would get a noteworthy success.  The party organization had significant inadequacies since the party was only founded six months before the election day. More importantly, the LPF was almost solely based on anti-immigrant discourse in a country in which even talking over such issues had long been a taboo. In addition to these, the only comparable case was the Center Democratic Party, CD, which had a quite unsuccessful profile in  the Dutch political culture. The party only managed to get some marginal electoral support in municipal elections and enough vote for a single MP in the European Parliament. The CP was also quite away from being a popular party in the Dutch parliament as it had just four MPs during its entire history.[1] The CD encountered serious social and political exclusion as well as judicial sanctions against itself. The party disappeared from the political scene in 1998 in the end. The other MPs used to leave the room every time the party leader stood up to give a speech and the Dutch media did not allow CD to become public. The judicial officers responded strictly when the party leader used to go too far in his critics against the multicultural structure of the country.

When it is evaluated in the European context, the Fortuyn case has significantly different characteristics from its counterparts although having many similarities. The LPF is of course similar to other European extremist rightist parties like the Flemish Vlaams Blok in Belgium, the Front National in France and the Austrian Freedom Party in many respects. Nevertheless, it will be much more appropriate to compare  the LPF with the Scandinavian anti-immigration parties. The agenda of the Progressive parties in Denmark and Norway focuses on the tax reduction with a neo-liberal ideology. Namely the anti-immigrant discourse is brought together with a liberal way of life. Just like these progressive parties, Fortuyn’s style of discourse was targeting the nationalist uneasiness within the Dutch society from a liberal perspective. Fortuyn was a university professor in sociology and had began his political career not from the right but from the extreme left of the spectrum. Moreover, the extreme nationalist leader was a gay and did not hinder this at all. Such a way of life is regarded as unacceptable in political life, let alone traditional right ideologies. Besides these, although having many supporters from the lower classes, LPF was really close to upper class parts of the society. It is really contradictory that there are many successful immigrants, who gave support to the Fortuyn movement.

Pim Fortuyn targeted the curtailed but immense issues and supplemented its extreme nationalist ideology with highly liberal discourses in the Netherlands. Namely Mr. Fortuyn was exactly targeting what the Dutch audience wanted. However, the party was not strong enough to supplement its electoral achievements with further successes since it was a well grounded one. The same party did not stay long in the coalition, gave way to the break-down of the first Balkenede cabinet and afterwards lost its support in the next elections and got only 2% of the votes.

To conclude, 2002 was a very long year in the Dutch political history. The Dutch were uneasy with the multicultural discourse of the elites for a long time but as said before nobody dared to touch the taboos before Mr. Fortuyn did. Issues like immigration, multiculturalism, integration, etc. have become scare headlines in the Netherlands since 2002. Of course, the international happenings also played a great role in placing immigration on the top list of the political agenda but Mr. Fortuyn was the first, who raised these questions in the Dutch political context. The success of the LPF is regarded as a turning point since it changed many things in the Netherlands. Most of the Dutch political  parties are now targeting the multicultural exhaustion. It will not be wrong to say that politics has shifted to the right in many aspects. The liberal right, People’s party of Freedom, VVD has already acculturated its policies towards the LPF. On the other hand, the socio-economic difficulties should also be taken into consideration. It seems highly possible that a left wing party can become highly popular if it brings its socio-economic discourses together with an anti-immigrant discourse.