Dutch Center-Right Government Takes Shape

After Dutch voters in no uncertain terms showed the country’s reigning center-left government the door on May 15 elections, Jan Peter Balkenende, the head of the Christian Democrats (CDA), and his conservative coalition have formed a new cabinet, which will be presented to Queen Beatrix on Monday and formally sworn in.

Balkende, 46, is set to become prime minister and the CDA, which won 40 seats in a 150-seat parliament, is set to take over the foreign affairs, justice, social affairs, agriculture and education ministries.

The CDA will enter into a government coalition with the free-market VVD party and the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF), the new right-wing political force which came out of nowhere in the months leading up to the election. The anti-immigrant LPF shook up the normally placid Dutch political landscape, and its charismatic and flamboyant founder, Pim Fortuyn, was shot and killed eight days before the elections. But the party did not die with its leader, and it pulled off an astonishing second place victory on May 15.

The LPF, whose former head stirred controversy by saying the Netherlands "was full" and couldn’t absorb more immigrants, will now be in charge of immigration policy.

"The whole (immigration) process will now be our responsibility. From the moment that an asylum seeker comes to our country until he is integrated. That’s what Pim Fortuyn always wanted," Mat Herben, Fortuyn’s successor as LPF leader, told the Dutch news agency ANP.

The party will control three other ministries in the Hague – economics, transportation and health. Most LPF members, including the newly named ministers, have little or no political experience, nor can they fall back on a well-oiled political machine. According to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, that makes them the most uncertain factor in the new cabinet constellation.

The likely deputy prime minister, Johan Remkes of the market-oriented VVD, told ANP that any government with a new party would prove unstable at times, but "the LPF inexperience could also be a fresh wind in the new cabinet."

His VVD party secured the finance ministry, along with the interior, defense, and housing.

The new cabinet is almost exclusively white and overwhelmingly male. One woman, Maria van der Hoeven (CDA), has been tapped. She will head the culture ministry.

Get Tough Policies

Indications are that a new wind could soon be blowing through this small country on the North Sea, famous for its liberal and tolerant government policies.

Earlier this month, the three parties offered a 45-page blueprint for reform that lays out a radical plan for tightening immigration policy. Among the key planks are plans to make asylum seekers pay nearly 7,000 euro ($7,000) for Dutch language and citizenship lessons and put in place new restrictions on bringing non-Western family members into the country.

About 10 percent of the 16 million people in the Netherlands, one of the world’s most densely populated countries, are non-Western immigrants.

Prime minister-in-waiting Balkenende has shown little love for the Netherlands’ look-the-other-way policies on soft drugs. He wants to discourage "drug tourism" in the country by moving "coffeeshops" where cannabis and hashish can be bought over the counter away from border areas. But there are as yet no plans to challenge the existence of coffeeshops themselves.

Balkenende has made clear he takes a dim view of the country’s euthanasia policy, which became law earlier this year. The coalition says it will order a review of mercy killing, which CDA members have described as "heartless."

Other plans of the coalition include getting tough on crime by putting more police on the streets, tightening social welfare spending, cutting the national debt and making it mandatory to carry identity papers.