[Thanks to Boomerang]

Tough week for the AIVD. Every service has to endure the fact that while its successes are hardly ever disclosed to protect the sources, its failures often reach the outside world quite easily. So it was this time. After several reports in the press concerning blunders and questionable work practices at the service, Andre Elissen and Marcial Hernandez of the PVV tabled seven questions to Rutte and Minister of the Interior Ivo Opstelten yesterday. 

The bad news began on Friday 13th (of course), with the news that an AIVD officer had been expelled from their post in Ankara by the Turkish government in 2011. A case of ‘forward defence’ gone wrong. The reasons behind this are unclear and there is an information black-out on the incident from both The Hague and Ankara, but not enough to prevent it from eventually reaching the press. The officer had fulfilled a liaison function with the Turkish service and was tracking muslin extremist groups, among others Hizbollah, which is meant to possess networks in the Netherlands and Germany. They have now been transferred to another embassy in the Middle Eastern. Apparently only around twelve embassies around the world have such an official AIVD liaison position to work with the local services, which indicates how important the position in Turkey was.

Dutch-Turkish relations are not at there best these days. According to Ankara the Netherlands is too easy-going on the PKK, and Dutch financial support for a human rights organisation operating in South-East Turkey was seen as support for the Kurdish cause (as well as the charge that the finance could have found its way to the militants). Another thorn in the bilateral side is the PVV itself. Geert Wilders has not hidden his feelings about the Turkish government of Recep Erdogan and his AK [Justice and Development] party. On 23 December PVV’ers Wilders, Hernandez, and Wim Kortenoeven questioned whether Turkish membership of NATO should be reconsidered due to the unilateral ending of military cooperation with Israel and France earlier in the year, stating that the Turkish government was now “an untrustworthy islamic ally.” Then there is the issue of 380,000 Dutch inhabitants of Turkish origin, a not insignificant fact of Dutch social life. Interesting times for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-Turkish diplomatic relations, 1612-2012.

But back to the AIVD. The next report was from Bart Olmer in De Telegraaf  last Saturday and concerned the case of Outman ben Amar, hired by the service to act as an Arabic translator but who in 2007 received four years in prison for leaking information to the ‘Hofstadgroep’ cell. The story painfully illustrates what can happen if a lack of knowledge in a specific sector is too hastily filled. Ben Amar’s application procedure is meant to have included enough suspicious signs – unexplained gaps in his CV, unclear motivation for the job – for the selection committee to give a negative advice to the AIVD. Remarkably these concerns were overruled due to the rapid need for Arabic-speaking personnel. The article was accompanied by another in the Telegraaf that covered the tragic suicide of an AIVD officer five years after the death of Theo van Gogh. This event has apparently caused others in the service to release information to the press about AIVD blunders, among others the den Amar case.

The result of the Telegraaf article(s) was the list of PVV questions, which focused on the trivialities of AIVD routine work (is it true that the staff operating the safes for secret information knock off at 4pm?) and whether the service possessed a sufficient ‘whistle-blower’ mechanism to deal with discontent lower down the ranks.  The PVV to the rescue of a disillusioned service? More like a classic move by the Wilders’ gang – blame the elites for being lax and undermining national security as a result.

[Results of an online poll run by Spits, after PVV MP Fleur Agema had suggested in 2009 that police should shoot at rioting (Moroccan) youth]

In this day and age, we are (unfortunately) becoming used to the dodgy wheeling and dealing of elected politicians and the way they ‘bend’ the law for their own gain. One might say these forms of corruption have been there since the dawn of democracy, but there does seem to be a trend that makes recent  years stand out. There is a connection between how electorates are becoming less loyal to particular parties, less tolerant of mis-management,  less trusting of official messages, and the declining attractiveness of the political profession for career-minded individuals. The expense-fund scandal that tainted almost every MP in the House of Commons last year is just one example of a wider malaise (although the master stroke of this story was Private Eye shifting the focus on to the Barclay brothers, the tax-haven millionaire owners behind the Telegraph‘s pious ranting over MP’s expenses, exposing the exposers as it were). Why take endless media-hyped flack in the public eye when the commercial sector will pay five times as much? What is public service worth these days, when the ability of governments to really change things – witness the inability to deal with the causes of the financial crisis instead of the consequences – is so limited? Why become a politician?

This last question has a special significance in the Netherlands at the moment. The CDA-VVD coalition, supported from the assembly by the PVV, rests, with 76 seats, on a slim 1 seat majority. And that majority is now apparently on the skids because one of the PVV’s MPs, Eric Lucassen, was convicted of sexual harrassment while serving in the army. In 2002 Lucassen, then an instructor at the military training school in Ermelo, was one of 10 soldiers convicted of trading diplomas for sex with female trainees. He took the case to appeal, but it was rejected. Now the case has come to light, and Wilders, the politician who wants more police on the streets and a no-tolerance approach to law and order, has a serious problem in his own backyard. If Wilders requires Lucassen to withdraw from parliament, the majority can only be stitched together with the help of the two MPs from the hard-core Calvinist SGP.  

What was clear was that Wilders, the man who usually wraps the media around his little finger, was for once put on the back foot by the sudden negative attention: “This is not the way that you want to attract publicity as a party” he said, with a weekend of head-scratching and escape-hatching before him. For he knows that his decision on the Lucassen case could have far-reaching consequences not just for the coalition, but also for his party as a credible political faction. Meanwhile Rutte exuded confidence as usual yesterday - while his first cabinet might potentially be on the rocks already, his main political competitor was the one feeling the squeeze.

The way Wilders seems for once to be running away from the media instead of facing them down is quite exceptional, as this newscast shows:

No party is squeeky clean, but the Lucassen case is just the latest in a remarkable series of events surrounding Wilders’ political colleagues. And here we are not talking not only corruption, but also violence. The PVV Honour Roll:

Dion Graus: a whole dossier of legal cases, disputes, accusations, unpaid bills, false declarations, violence, and doctored CVs. And that was after he became an MP in 2006.

Hero Brinkman: Notorious for challenging the lack of democracy within the PVV -  and for allegedly using violence to obtain a beer at the parliament’s press centre in September 2009.

Marcial Hernandez: Spent the night in a police cell in September 2010 after head-butting a civil servant in a pub brawl in The Hague. The case remains open.  

Gidi Markuszower: Was fifth on the PVV electoral list, but withdrew in April this year due to negative publicity. Then Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin had informed Wilders that Markuszower was “a risk to the integrity” of the Netherlands, referring in cryptic language to the fact that the prospective MP had been in contact with a foreign intelligence service. Since Markuszower had been cautioned for possessing a firearm during a celebration for the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel in 2008, it seems clear who the foreign intelligence service was.

Mellony van Hemert: Was ninth on the PVV electoral list, but withdrew in April this year due to revelations over her false claim to be a psychologist and doubts over the truthfulness of a book she intended to publish on a notorious murder case.

Arjan Brogt: Was 34th on the PVV list, but withdrew in April this year after he was forced by a judge to repay 1500 Euro from false declarations he had submitted while member of a student association.

Jhim van Bemmel: irregular financial transactions surrounding the closure of his business New Tech Partners.

After the clear-out in April, when three of the above were purged from the party candidate list, Wilders must have hoped that the PVV wagon would hold together. But the reputation of Graus, Hernandez, and now Lucassen are raising new doubts. It is not known exactly how Wilders checks potential PVV candidates. In contrast to other parties, where individuals rise up through the committees and the caucuses, the PVV was thrown together rapidly, clearly without the benefit of major checks. It is up to each party to check out their candidates, no-one else. Hence the way in which this new case reflects strongly on Wilders’ management style.

Despite his conviction, it is not compulsory that Lucassen withdraws from parliament. After all, his party boss is in the dock these days as well, for inciting hatred. Perhaps Wilders will manage to turn this one around as well. But in contrast to his usual split-second political manipulations, this one is giving him a real headache. HP / De Tijd added to the mix over the weekend by throwing in one of those useless but nevertheless provocative statisitcs that journalists sometimes dig up: At present 20% of the PVV parliamentarians have been involved in criminal activities, a figure higher than the 13.8% of Moroccan youths who have seen the wrong side of the law in ‘problem-town’ Gouda. As of Monday afternoon, Wilders is still yet to react in full to the Lucassen affair.

‘This is a celebration’ said Maxime Verhagen on Saturday, after 32% of CDA party members had voted against the proposed coalition with the VVD. Meanwhile a few hundred miles to the East, Geert Wilders was talking of Islam as a ‘dangerous ideology’ in Berlin. Two days later he was sitting in an Amsterdam courtroom facing charges of inciting hatred. A case which then almost fell apart on the first day due to a major procedural mistake by the chief judge.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Fortunately, HB contributor Jovan Pronk is on hand to offer some welcome insights….

Power Play

by Jovan Pronk

So then, after all the huffing and puffing at the CDA conference in Arnhem last weekend – check out crown-prince-in-retirement Camiel Eurlings emotional contribution (in Dutch):

Brief translation: The CDA is strong enough to hold onto its principles and enter this coalition, and we will never be like the PVV. Maxime, we will follow you into the sea if necessary etc etc

A minority VVD-CDA government, supported by Geert Wilder’s anti-Islamic Freedom Party (PVV), is virtually a fact. All that remains is the divvying up of the ministerial posts and the traditional photo on the palace steps with Queen Beatrix.

On one level CDA leader Maxime Verhagen has pulled off a remarkable piece of political gamesmanship. His divided party, halved and humiliated in the last election, is about to re-enter government as joint-partners with the VVD with, one assumes, more ministers than in the last administration. Despite dealing with Wilders there was much talk in Arnhem of the CDA staying true to its ‘Christian Democratic principles and values’, but as journalists Kustaw Bessems and  Dirk Jan Nieuwboer in ‘De Pers’ pointed out, Christian Democratic ideology is:

“a bit like the Loch Ness monster. Everyone has heard of it, but does it actually exist? Sure, it has something to do with ‘justice, responsibility, solidarity, stewardship’, but what any of this actually means today, no one knows. “We must finish first again!”. Eurlings knew that at least.”

Whether this government will last any longer than the farcical coalition between the VVD, CDA and the late Pim Fortuyn’s party remains an open question. Whilst Geert Wilders himself appears in an Amsterdam courtroom for the second day, on charges of discrimination and fermenting hate, remarkably little attention has been given to the fact that one of his MPs, defense spokesman Marcial Hernandez, spent a night in police custody having reportedly head butted a civil servant in a barroom row. Another Freedom Party MP, Hero Brinkman, was previously banned from the press centre following an altercation with a barman. No charges were pressed, and Brinkman denied he had actually attacked the barman, but admitted to a ‘drinking problem’. Sharp-eyed political journalist  Peter Middendorp noted that in a short period of time MPs from the Freedom Party have already been responsible for more acts of violence in and around the parliament than in any time in Dutch parliamentary history.

Whilst much focus was given to whether two ‘dissenting’ CDA MPs would back the coalition- they concluded they would, sort-of -  the minority government will also be dependent on law makers in Wilder’s one-member-party, voting as told. Or at least keeping out of police cells.

Like most Western European countries the Netherlands faces a difficult period of balancing financial austerity and budget cuts without damaging fragile economic recovery. It is set to do so with a minority government dependent on the support of a populist, far-right party of cranks, thugs and islamophobes. Conservative VVD leader Mark Rutte is set to become the first nominally ‘liberal’ Dutch Prime Minister since  Pieter Cort van der Linden (1913-1918). Whether his government will remain long in office is another matter.