A new Dutch government took power yesterday, with 38-year-old centrist Rob Jetten sworn in as the nation’s youngest-ever prime minister and the first openly gay one.
Jetten pulled off a stunning election win in October, coming from behind to dethrone the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) led by firebrand politician Geert Wilders by a razor-thin margin.
The snap election was called after the PVV withdrew from the previous coalition, the Netherlands’ most right-wing government in recent history, which lasted just 11 months.
Photo: AFP
Jetten’s D66 has teamed up with the center-right CDA party and the liberal VVD to form a coalition, but will fall nine seats short of a parliamentary majority with only 66 seats.
The parties took 117 days to form their coalition — much less than the 223 days taken to form the previous government.
After his election victory, Jetten said that it was possible to beat populist movements “if you campaign with a positive message for your country.”
On the campaign trail, he said he wanted to “bring the Netherlands back to the heart of Europe because without European cooperation, we are nowhere.”
In a manifesto published last month, the three parties pledged full support for Ukraine and vowed to live up to the nation’s NATO spending commitments.
Although the new government is not as far to the right as the previous one, it still has a “right-wing signature,” said Sarah de Lange, a professor of politics at Leiden University.
“The coalition has opted for budget cuts rather than running a deficit to finance any investments it wants to make” and there is “substantial continuity between the immigration plans of the new government and the previous one,” De Lange said.
The parties have pledged to press ahead with a crackdown on migration, including measures such as tougher rules on family reunification. They also want to cut social benefits, including unemployment benefits, to help finance proposed investments in the military and defence.
However, since the coalition will rely on support from opposition parties to pass legislation, “getting larger reforms passed by parliament might take longer than usual,” De Lange said.
Jetten and his Cabinet were sworn in yesterday by King Willem-Alexander at the Huis Ten Bosch in The Hague.
The prime minister was initially more keen on a broad coalition, including the left-leaning Groenlinks/PvdA, but this was firmly opposed by VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz.
Wilders, who shook Europe’s political scene to the core with a shock election win in November 2023, saw his fortunes plummet in last year’s election.
His PVV party plunged from 37 seats in 2023 to 26 seats after what was widely seen as a lackluster campaign.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS