On March 20, the Netherlands had elections for its 12 provinces and its 21 water boards. Given the possibility that the Dutch government would lose its majority in the Senate, these regional elections caused national tensions. The surprising outcome: a new party got the most votes.
The Forum for Democracy was founded late 2016 by Thierry Baudet (1983), the new kid in town. In the 2017 Dutch general election, it won 2 out of 150 seats (1.3%) in the House of Representatives. Soon it will have 13 out of 75 seats (17.3%) in the Senate. Their popular messages are mostly negative: anti-climate transition, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam and so on.
To a certain extent, the Forum for Democracy is similar as the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders: both are nationalist parties but the first is right-wing and won 13 seats, while the second has a left-wing agenda and almost halved from 9 to 5 seats. The Socialist Party, another nationalist and left-wing party, more than halved from 9 to 4 seats.
The press argues that the centrist parties were crushed by the extremists. In my calculations, the centrists lost 4 seats (or 5.3%) to extremist parties. The total number of seats for the 3 main extremist parties went from 18 to 22 seats (29.3%). There are some other parties that qualify as extremist, like the Animal Party (remains at 2.6%) and the Turkish DENK party (0%).
A 70/30 split between centrists and extremists seems realistic in this day and age. A further eroding of centrist parties would, however, indeed pose serious problems for forming new coalition governments.
Extremist parties typically refuse participating in coalitions as they know they can only lose voters by compromising (yesterday’s blog). I suppose that their lack of assuming accountability and/or responsibility (my blogs) would normally keep them around 10-30%.
As mentioned before, the 21st century’s Great Divide is between Nationalism and Globalism a.k.a. Internationalism (my blogs, Economist, GPF, TED). From 1800 to 2000, the Great Divide was between Left-Labour-Progressives and Right-Capital-Conservatism (my 2016 blog).
Interestingly, the 3rd Wave of green or climate-based politics (my recent blog) is largely divided over (i) the use of fear by left-wing and/or internationalist parties, and (ii) the use of doubt–denial and sometimes hope-optimism by right-wing and/or nationalist parties.
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”. A quote by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), a.k.a. Seneca the Younger a.k.a. Seneca, a Roman philosopher.
New Kid in Town (1976) by The Eagles
artists, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
There’s talk on the street
It’s there to remind you
It doesn’t really matter which side you’re on
You’re walking away
And they’re talking behind you
They will never forget you ’til somebody new comes along
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
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