DUTCH CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS ON COURSE TO KEEP POWER
By Emma Thomasson

Swissinfo, Switzerland
Nov 22 2006

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Dutch Christian Democrats were on course to
retain power in an election on Wednesday but faced a struggle to form
a government as voters rewarded parties on the far-left and far-right,
preliminary results showed.

Forecasts based on almost a quarter of the votes counted projected
that Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s Christian Democrats (CDA)
would win the most seats in the 150-seat parliament, comfortably
ahead of the opposition Labour party.

But the far-left Socialists (SP) soared to third place ahead of the
liberal VVD, Balkenende’s coalition partner, making his job of forming
a strong government much more difficult.

Who joins the next coalition will determine how closely Balkenende
sticks to his business-friendly policies and tough line on immigration,
long a major concern of Dutch voters.

The other big winner was the new party of anti-immigration maverick
Geert Wilders, who says the Netherlands risks being flooded by Muslims
and wants an immediate halt to new migrants.

"The CDA has promised to do nothing, the SP wants to go back to the
70’s and Wilders wants to put a fence around the Netherlands," said
economics lecturer Bas Jacobs.

"All the parties in the Netherlands that want change lost, and those
parties that don’t want change, gained."

Dutch politics has become much more unstable since the murder of
anti-immigration populist Pim Fortuyn in 2002, with three elections
in four years and last year’s rejection of the European constitution,
opposed by both Wilders and the SP.

Neither Balkenende’s current alliance with the VVD liberals nor a
Labour-led coalition with the far-left Socialists and environmentalist
Green Left was on track for a parliamentary majority, making long
coalition talks likely.

"GRAND COALITION"

The CDA and Labour could try to form an uneasy right-left partnership
like the one governing Germany despite likely produce discord over
tax, pensions and immigration policy. But even that combination lacked
the 76 seats needed for a majority.

"Frankly it’s chaos. The real winner is the only party that actually
did not participate, which is the party of the anarchists," said
Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm from the VVD.

Balkenende, 50, took credit for a strong economic recovery in the
last year that he said was supported by unpopular welfare reforms
which he and Zalm pushed through early in his term.

Labour leader Wouter Bos, 43, who had a bad start to the day when
he turned up to vote without the right papers, accuses Balkenende
of pandering to big business and the wealthy while failing to fight
inequality.

He has pledged to slow corporate tax cuts and lift spending on
childcare and job-creation programmes. Labour has also promised an
amnesty for some who have waited years for asylum.

Balkenende has implemented some of the toughest immigration and
integration laws in Europe since the meteoric rise of Fortuyn in
2002 and the killing of Islam critic and filmmaker Theo van Gogh by
an Islamist militant in 2004.

His government has also said it will ban Muslim women wearing face
veils in public, a demand made by Wilders.

The election, originally scheduled for May 2007, was called after the
centre-right coalition collapsed in June in a row over the government’s
handling of the disputed citizenship of Somali-born Dutch politician
and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Back then, Labour had a strong lead in the opinion polls, but that
evaporated as the economy rebounded and as Balkenende went on the
offensive, portraying Bos as superficial.

Labour had hoped for strong backing from the almost 10 percent of
the electorate of immigrant origin, although Turkish voters were
angered after it dropped an election candidate for not accepting
Ottoman Turkey’s killing of Armenians as genocide.