by Oui
Tue Mar 16th, 2021 at 02:10:21 PM EST
[Update-1]
Unexpectedly, not to my surprise, the BIG lie caught up with caretaker PM Mark Rutte ...
The End of Mark Rutte? | April 1, 2021 |
Trust eroded badly from pre-election 54% to 25% today 😡
END OF UPDATE
In recent weeks the Liberal Freedom Party VVD lost the equivalent of 10 seats in polling from a record high of 43 seats. Mark Rutte back on Earth.
Conservative Dutch leader has a long list of mismanagement in government during his tenure of 10 years.
The most serious for me is the obfuscation, his secrecy in decision making and withholding crucial information from Parliament - de Tweede Kamer. This deficit has been named the Rutte Doctrine.
Frontpaged - Frank Schnittger
Major policy flaws in random order ...
Reparations damage to homes and business in Northern province Groningen due to half a century extracting natural gas and the resulting earthquakes.
Failure to meet EU Standards on CO2 reduction and advance sustainable energy.
Wrongful designation of fraud by 100,000 tax payers due to inadequate controls and laissez fair position tax authority. Lasted for a decade and put households in financial ruin.
A decade of austerity in healthcare privatizing hospitals and cutting numbers of beds and ICU facilities across the country.
Tax relief for large multinationals and increasing inequality. Leaving small business enterprise behind and making redundancy more corporation friendly.
Dutch employees are far worse off lacking indefinite labour contracts or ultimately work on hourly basis or as self-employed lacking any social safety net.
This array of Conservative policy has led to economic ruin of the individual, small business and extreme high number of deaths during corona pandemic.
The Buck Stops Here: Political Theater and lessons of accountability amidst Holland's benefits affair
On 15 January, 2021 the entire third-term cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Rutte's right-wing VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie) party resigned after a multi-year investigation found that between 2013 and 2019 government tax officials (Belastingdienst) wrongly accused tens of thousands of working families of making fraudulent childcare benefit claims and ordered them to repay the allowances back in full. Most of these families were racially profiled according to their foreign-sounding last names. The fraud of accusing these immigrant or foreign-background Dutch families of cheating on their benefits, caused major harms.
Mark Rutte has been riding high in the polls and popularity ranking for many years. His party had to move further to the right on policy of immigration leading to intensive division in the nation. Rutte praying the xenophobic and Islamophobic card to prevent his electorate to vote for Geert Wilders or recently Thierry Baudet.
Former leading parties in Dutch Politics and administrations Labour (PvdA) and Christian Democrats (CDA) have been a failure and are a minority with 16 and 10 seats in latest polls. The only surprise has been a centrum Liberal party of Sigrid Kaag, the leader of D66.
There are over thirty parties participating in thus week's general election for Parliament. As the results are announced later this week, a new administration will be composed of the same four or five parties composed as of today ... no big surprises. There is always a third of the electorate who will decide late as he/she enters the voting booth.
The Left and Social Solidarity is nowhere to be seen ... did not survive the turn of the century and the effects of 9/11 and military policy of Bush and Neocons. Society has changed drastically, all vulnerable persons are trampled in the market economy. Winning characters are possessed with high level of Narcissism and selfishness. The planet has become a chilly place with climate change running amok much similar to a virus - unstoppable.
A recent article is one of the very few with criticism of Rutte and his failed leadership ...
A prime minister who has become jaded after ten years and who no longer shows any real decisiveness, except for fine words, and who brushes off problems with a broad smile.
It was typical last Friday, when a distraught hospitality entrepreneur in Nieuwsuur asked Rutte questions about financial aid and said: "Why do you keep smiling at my question?" Rutte had to apologize stammering.
What surprises me most is that in all media coverage there is hardly any mention of a bankrupt prime minister, responsible for a caretaker cabinet.
Responsibility, the word that has become a kind of mantra for him (see the Wilders-Rutte debate at Pauw). What about the Dutch who still think Rutte is a strong leader and who want to vote for him? Because: "He is doing quite well".
For the sake of convenience, we forget the lack of leadership in relation to ordinary citizens. Are we forgetting the weak handling of the earthquake damage in Groningen? Have we forgotten years of unfairly accusing citizens of childcare allowance fraud?
Are we forgetting the lack of leadership in combating covid with too few masks, too little testing capacity, too little differentiation in the opening of shops, schools, catering and now the slow vaccination?
Not to mention how the Netherlands dangles at the bottom of the list of countries that must achieve the climate goals or structurally underpay the police, teachers and nurses.
Embracing the image of a prime minister who profiles himself as a leader for the Netherlands is everyone's right. Only, don't expect any more decisiveness from a politician who sits on the plush for too long.
Rutte IV will not complete its four year term as Parliament will start an enquete, two investigations...
So sad ... Mark Rutte competes for votes with Geert Wilders ...
Lessons from the Netherlands on staying in power | FT |
Extended PR team to put slogans into his mouth:
How his PR team succeeded in keeping the term "Rutte Doctrine" out of the campaign | NRC |
Until now, Rutte's political assistants were always women, with the exception of the two times that Caroliene Hermans was on maternity leave. She was replaced by defense spokesman Peter Valstar, now a candidate MP for the VVD. Close employees have known for a long time that Rutte is afraid of missing out if there is not a woman who watches and thinks along with him.
The campaign team also includes former RTL journalist Kees Berghuis, leading spokesperson for the VVD, communications specialist Bas Erlings, the campaign manager of the Benjamin van Es party bureau, the head of the online department Robert van As, the secretary of the parliamentary party Eelco Heinen and deputy head of policy Boudewijn Beukers. VVD party chairman Klaas Dijkhoff sometimes also contributes, Rutte thinks his ideas are very important.
Over the years, they have often been the same faces at the VVD. Rutte does not like changes. He feels good when the people in his team know and trust each other through and through.
In campaigns, the VVD, and especially Mark Rutte himself, has a maxim: do not talk to the outside world about tactics. Rutte can get very angry if someone does, even if it is long after the elections. Nevertheless, it is clear that the VVD's strategy is different this year than in previous elections. More than ever, Mark Rutte, the crisis prime minister, is central. The VVD has risen by about ten seats in the polls since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. After major televised speeches about the corona by Prime Minister Rutte, the VVD kept rising a little in the polls. Jan Driessen, Rutte's former campaign strategist, speaks of the "premier bonus de luxe".
So everything revolves around Rutte. He is not naturally enthusiastic about this, would rather slogans on posters than his own head. But, says VVD adviser Ben Verwaayen, if it has been agreed that way, Rutte will do what is expected of him. "He is very disciplined about that. And he treats his team the way he treats all his employees, he trusts them to do their job well and doesn't think he knows better."
From the diaries ...
Dutch Government Collapse | Jan. 16, 2021 |
