MrHola
Banned
(WARNING: wall of text inbound!))
Pim Fortuyn got 17% of the vote in the May 2002 elections in the Netherlands. He entered the election campaign at the head of a list of candidates under his name, not a party. He had no national party organisation - in fact he was expelled by the party which had first chosen him as candidate. In a few weeks, purely on the basis of his own name and reputation, he came close to leading in the opinion polls. Then, nine days before the election, he was assassinated. Nevertheless his reputation got 26 largely unknown candidates elected to the 150-seat Dutch parliament, and put them into power in a short-lived coalition government. From zero to 26 seats was a record for any new party in the Netherlands, let alone a party with a dead leader.
Right. Now for some background information about the man.
In media reports Fortuyn was referred to as a 'maverick' and 'an outsider', but that is (IMO) inaccurate. He was part of the political class in the Netherlands, with enough academic background for at least a junior ministry, if he had kept to a standard career path. He had rich friends in the business community, including ex-CEO's of large companies. Fortuyn also had supporters in the Christian-Democratic CDA and the liberal VVD, who were nominally his competitors - many of his candidates were ex-members of these parties. He was not isolated from national politics, but part of it. Of course Fortuyn shocked people, even in the Netherlands, by his lifestyle - by telling interviewers explicit details of his sexual activities, for instance. But he only did that, when it was clear that the normal career path to a cabinet post was closed.
In the years before the election, Fortuyn was a well-known talk-show guest, columnist, and speaker. He wrote several books about the decline of the country, and the failings of the elite - not a very unusual theme, as such. Nevertheless, his political ambitions were clear, and so was the issue which inspired him: immigration.
As the 'purple cabinet' - a red-blue coalition of social-democrats with liberal parties - neared the end of its second term, there was a general climate of political disillusion. Some sort of new force was expected to arrive on the national political scene. It did, but without Fortuyn at first. Leefbaar Nederland (Livable Netherlands) was a coalition of local parties, most of them with the word 'leefbaar' in their name. Its founders had successfully challenged the mainstream parties in Utrecht and Hilversum with the 'livable' theme, and hoped to repeat the trick at national level. They needed a prominent charismatic figure to head their list of candidates, although they would retain control of the party. When they could find no-one else, they turned to Pim Fortuyn. In doing so they took a risk, as they said openly at the time: Leefbaar Nederland was a populist party, but not specifically an anti-immigration party. Its founders told Fortuyn not to demand a complete end to immigration, and not to attack Islam during the campaign.
Leefbaar Nederland choose Pim Fortuyn as their lead candidate in November 2001. All went as planned, for several months, and Leefbaar Nederland began to climb in the opinion polls - to a possible 25 seats, a great success for a new party. Then in February, Fortuyn gave an interview to De Volkskrant in which he broke his agreement with Leefbaar Nederland: The Netherlands is full, preferably zero immigration, all borders closed, no-one enters the country without an iris scan, no Muslim immigrants, the Islam is a backward culture, Muslims are a dangerous minority in society, deport Netherlands-Antillians even though they have a Dutch passport, and scrap Article 1 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination. And a typical Fortuyn observation: "Moroccans don't mug Moroccans, did you ever notice that?" The following day Leefbaar Nederland sacked him as lead candidate. He was there at the invitation of its founders and financiers, and he had no independent power base in the party: there was nothing he could do to prevent it. It seemed that he was finished politically, and the media treated the story that way.
Fortuyn then considered leaving politics altogether, but friends of his convinced him to ''go at it alone''. Which he did. In a few weeks Fortuyn selected a list of candidates, and registered it for the election under the name Lijst Pim Fortuyn. At that stage it consisted of Fortuyn, his financiers, and anyone they choose as a candidate. There was no shortage - the faxes apparently started arriving, as soon as he announced his intention to run alone. Several are immigrants (such as Fieroes Zeroual and Joao Varela): the Fortuyn list offered them a unique chance of election to Parliament, and Fortuyn needed them to counter the constant accusations of racism.
Leefbaar Nederland collapsed in the polls, ultimately winning just two seats. The Fortuyn list quickly replaced it in poll success, climbing to around 25 seats. In March Fortuyn scored a victory in municipal elections, with his own 'liveable-ist' party, Leefbaar Rotterdam. Only two months after it was founded, Leefbaar Rotterdam displaced the Labour party (PvdA) from power. (The PvdA held power in Rotterdam, alone or in coalition, since the Second World War). The victory in Rotterdam showed that Fortuyn could transform high poll scores into real votes: from then on, he dominated the national election campaign. The Lijst Fortuyn stabilised at the 25-seat level in the polls, but in the last two weeks of the campaign began a new climb: it looked possible that it might get the largest share of the vote. This despite the fact, that the voters had never heard of the candidates - and when they did hear about them, it was usually in the form of a scandal.
That was the state of affairs at the beginning of May 2002. The certainty of a defeat for the political establishment, especially the parties of the 'purple coalition'. The probability that Fortuyn would be the key figure in the formation of the next coalition, and possibly the leader of the largest party, and therefore first choice for Prime Minister. On Monday 6 May, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was shot dead by an radical enviromentalist at the national broadcasting centre in Hilversum.
So. What if Fortuyn was not assassinated?
My opnion? I think it's too easy to dismiss Fortuyn as a ''diet-coke'' version of Wilders; he was more complex then that. Pim Fortuyn was a flamboyant gay man. He condemned Muslim immigration because, according to him, those newcomers to the Netherlands refused to assimilate to the socially liberal Dutch society, in which gay sexuality is as acceptable as straight. Problems were stressful in Rotterdam, Fortuyn's home city, where the Muslim population is estimated to be as high as 45 percent. Fortuyn stated, "I have gay friends who have been beaten up by young Moroccans in Rotterdam." His immigration philosophy derived precisely because of the socially tolerant nature of the Netherlands, a quality he treasured and wanted to preserve. This was also the man who said he was opposed to throwing criminal immigrants out on principle, as they are ''our problem' now. Anyway, I personally like to think that his election could lead to an early death of right-wing populism in the Netherlands.
Pim Fortuyn got 17% of the vote in the May 2002 elections in the Netherlands. He entered the election campaign at the head of a list of candidates under his name, not a party. He had no national party organisation - in fact he was expelled by the party which had first chosen him as candidate. In a few weeks, purely on the basis of his own name and reputation, he came close to leading in the opinion polls. Then, nine days before the election, he was assassinated. Nevertheless his reputation got 26 largely unknown candidates elected to the 150-seat Dutch parliament, and put them into power in a short-lived coalition government. From zero to 26 seats was a record for any new party in the Netherlands, let alone a party with a dead leader.
Right. Now for some background information about the man.
In media reports Fortuyn was referred to as a 'maverick' and 'an outsider', but that is (IMO) inaccurate. He was part of the political class in the Netherlands, with enough academic background for at least a junior ministry, if he had kept to a standard career path. He had rich friends in the business community, including ex-CEO's of large companies. Fortuyn also had supporters in the Christian-Democratic CDA and the liberal VVD, who were nominally his competitors - many of his candidates were ex-members of these parties. He was not isolated from national politics, but part of it. Of course Fortuyn shocked people, even in the Netherlands, by his lifestyle - by telling interviewers explicit details of his sexual activities, for instance. But he only did that, when it was clear that the normal career path to a cabinet post was closed.
In the years before the election, Fortuyn was a well-known talk-show guest, columnist, and speaker. He wrote several books about the decline of the country, and the failings of the elite - not a very unusual theme, as such. Nevertheless, his political ambitions were clear, and so was the issue which inspired him: immigration.
As the 'purple cabinet' - a red-blue coalition of social-democrats with liberal parties - neared the end of its second term, there was a general climate of political disillusion. Some sort of new force was expected to arrive on the national political scene. It did, but without Fortuyn at first. Leefbaar Nederland (Livable Netherlands) was a coalition of local parties, most of them with the word 'leefbaar' in their name. Its founders had successfully challenged the mainstream parties in Utrecht and Hilversum with the 'livable' theme, and hoped to repeat the trick at national level. They needed a prominent charismatic figure to head their list of candidates, although they would retain control of the party. When they could find no-one else, they turned to Pim Fortuyn. In doing so they took a risk, as they said openly at the time: Leefbaar Nederland was a populist party, but not specifically an anti-immigration party. Its founders told Fortuyn not to demand a complete end to immigration, and not to attack Islam during the campaign.
Leefbaar Nederland choose Pim Fortuyn as their lead candidate in November 2001. All went as planned, for several months, and Leefbaar Nederland began to climb in the opinion polls - to a possible 25 seats, a great success for a new party. Then in February, Fortuyn gave an interview to De Volkskrant in which he broke his agreement with Leefbaar Nederland: The Netherlands is full, preferably zero immigration, all borders closed, no-one enters the country without an iris scan, no Muslim immigrants, the Islam is a backward culture, Muslims are a dangerous minority in society, deport Netherlands-Antillians even though they have a Dutch passport, and scrap Article 1 of the Constitution, which prohibits discrimination. And a typical Fortuyn observation: "Moroccans don't mug Moroccans, did you ever notice that?" The following day Leefbaar Nederland sacked him as lead candidate. He was there at the invitation of its founders and financiers, and he had no independent power base in the party: there was nothing he could do to prevent it. It seemed that he was finished politically, and the media treated the story that way.
Fortuyn then considered leaving politics altogether, but friends of his convinced him to ''go at it alone''. Which he did. In a few weeks Fortuyn selected a list of candidates, and registered it for the election under the name Lijst Pim Fortuyn. At that stage it consisted of Fortuyn, his financiers, and anyone they choose as a candidate. There was no shortage - the faxes apparently started arriving, as soon as he announced his intention to run alone. Several are immigrants (such as Fieroes Zeroual and Joao Varela): the Fortuyn list offered them a unique chance of election to Parliament, and Fortuyn needed them to counter the constant accusations of racism.
Leefbaar Nederland collapsed in the polls, ultimately winning just two seats. The Fortuyn list quickly replaced it in poll success, climbing to around 25 seats. In March Fortuyn scored a victory in municipal elections, with his own 'liveable-ist' party, Leefbaar Rotterdam. Only two months after it was founded, Leefbaar Rotterdam displaced the Labour party (PvdA) from power. (The PvdA held power in Rotterdam, alone or in coalition, since the Second World War). The victory in Rotterdam showed that Fortuyn could transform high poll scores into real votes: from then on, he dominated the national election campaign. The Lijst Fortuyn stabilised at the 25-seat level in the polls, but in the last two weeks of the campaign began a new climb: it looked possible that it might get the largest share of the vote. This despite the fact, that the voters had never heard of the candidates - and when they did hear about them, it was usually in the form of a scandal.
That was the state of affairs at the beginning of May 2002. The certainty of a defeat for the political establishment, especially the parties of the 'purple coalition'. The probability that Fortuyn would be the key figure in the formation of the next coalition, and possibly the leader of the largest party, and therefore first choice for Prime Minister. On Monday 6 May, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was shot dead by an radical enviromentalist at the national broadcasting centre in Hilversum.
So. What if Fortuyn was not assassinated?
My opnion? I think it's too easy to dismiss Fortuyn as a ''diet-coke'' version of Wilders; he was more complex then that. Pim Fortuyn was a flamboyant gay man. He condemned Muslim immigration because, according to him, those newcomers to the Netherlands refused to assimilate to the socially liberal Dutch society, in which gay sexuality is as acceptable as straight. Problems were stressful in Rotterdam, Fortuyn's home city, where the Muslim population is estimated to be as high as 45 percent. Fortuyn stated, "I have gay friends who have been beaten up by young Moroccans in Rotterdam." His immigration philosophy derived precisely because of the socially tolerant nature of the Netherlands, a quality he treasured and wanted to preserve. This was also the man who said he was opposed to throwing criminal immigrants out on principle, as they are ''our problem' now. Anyway, I personally like to think that his election could lead to an early death of right-wing populism in the Netherlands.
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