[SingleMan]

Dutch Voters Split, and Right Surges
By STEPHEN CASTLE and STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: June 10, 2010


THE HAGUE — After the first election in a euro-zone country since the European economic crisis, Dutch voters found themselves divided politically on Thursday and surprised by the surge in popularity of an anti-immigrant party.

With no party winning a majority in the 150-seat Parliament, the result of Wednesday’s voting is likely to mean a long and difficult negotiation over a new governing coalition that could contain three or more parties.

The pro-business Dutch Liberal Party had 31 seats and the center-left Labor Party 30, with 98 percent of the votes counted. But the far-right Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders demanded a share of government after it came in third with 24 seats, more than doubling its representation in the 150-member Parliament.

“We want to be part of the new government,” declared Mr. Wilders, whose party wants to end immigration from Muslim countries and ban new mosques.

“The impossible has happened,” he told a party gathering. “The Netherlands chose more security, less crime, less immigration and less Islam.”

The front-page headline Thursday in the NRC Next newspaper declared “A divided Netherlands.”

“Never has the voters’ message been so mixed,” NRC Next said in an editorial. “A stable governing coalition with three parties does not seem possible.”

The Christian Democrats, who led the last four coalitions, were punished by voters, winning only 21 seats, down from 41. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, 54, announced that he was quitting as the leader of the party and as a legislator.

Among the other parties, the Socialist Party got 15 seats, down from 25, the Green GroenLinks and centrist D66 made gains to get 10 each, and the Christian Union will be holding five seats, having lost one.

Official results will be released on Tuesday.

While Labor made a late surge behind the former mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, the general mood of the voters was toward economic austerity and nationalism.

The strong showing of the populist Mr. Wilders, who combines far-right nationalism with leftist economic ideas, may lead to his party’s being asked to join a governing coalition for the first time.

Mr. Wilders, 46, says that Islam is the biggest threat facing his country. He faces criminal prosecution, accused of inciting hatred after he equated radical Islam with Nazism in a film and called for pages to be ripped out of the Koran. He also favors banning the Koran, new mosques and the wearing of full facial veils by Muslim women.

Once a model of staid stability, Dutch political life has been volatile for years. The country was convulsed by the assassination of the anti-immigration campaigner Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and then two years later by the murder of Theo van Gogh, who had made a documentary critical of Islam.

A campaign that many thought would focus on immigration and Afghanistan instead seemed to turn on economic issues, with voters apparently embracing the Liberal Party’s message of austerity and spending cuts — but no tax increases — to reduce the expanding budget deficit.

But reaction to immigration was never far below the surface, with even the Liberals taking pages out of Mr. Wilders’ policies and vowing to keep immigrants from getting social benefits for 10 years.

Politicians agree that any new administration will have to make significant budget cuts to curb a projected deficit of 6.6 percent of gross domestic product this year. So far, the Netherlands has not unveiled a big austerity package, but large-scale reductions in public spending are expected next year.

The election was called in February when the Labor Party withdrew from the government, refusing to approve plans to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan. The Labor Party, which nominated Mr. Cohen, 62, renowned for his tolerant running of Amsterdam, did well in early campaigning.

But the economic crisis prompted the Dutch, who share many of the same economic instincts as the Germans, to move toward the Liberals and their leader, Mr. Rutte, 43. For a time, it looked as if the Liberals might lead a government for the first time with a reasonable plurality.

But Mr. Cohen had a good final televised debate, and the race tightened again.

“The economy was by far the main issue we have had in the campaign,” said Maurice de Hond, a prominent Dutch pollster, who predicted a race too close to call between the Liberals and Labor.

Charlotte Brand, a political researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen, said Mr. Wilders’s popularity was understated by the opinion polls because voters here, as in France, are less likely to admit to anti-immigrant prejudice.

“The campaign was only about the economy, but on the streets the election was also about immigration,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/wo...ef=global-home