centrist Rob Jetten surprises Geert Wilders’ far proper | EUROtoday
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Lhe shock comes as a lot from the messenger as from the message. Just a month in the past, nobody was anticipating Rob Jetten, the person who created a shock in the course of the Dutch legislative elections on Wednesday October 29 by main a optimistic, pro-European marketing campaign, proposing concrete options, with out fanfare. His occasion, the D66 (Democrats 66), of social-liberal inspiration, benefited from a breakthrough within the final days of the marketing campaign. In the primary ballot popping out of the polls at 9 p.m., D66 took the lead with 27 seats, forward of the populist Geert Wilders (PVV) who would lose 12 seats within the Lower House (25 seats).
The liberal VVD, led by Dilan Yesilgös-Zegerius, held on with 23 seats. On the opposite hand, it’s a defeat for the Labor Party of Frans Timmermans (PvdA-GL) who completed the race in 4th place (20 seats, down 5 seats) whereas they had been hoping, only a few days in the past, to complete second or beat Wilders. The Christian Democrats of the CDA have come a good distance with 19 seats (14 seats extra) after the digital disappearance of the dissident occasion, the NSC.
ALSO READ Netherlands: Geert Wilders’ “all or nothing” earlier than the legislative electionsIn reality, the CDA was on track to do even higher however their chief, Henri Bontenbal, declared, on the finish of the marketing campaign, that he wouldn’t intervene in opposition to Christian colleges which educate that gay relations are unhealthy, affirming that the liberty of training assured by article 23 of the Dutch Constitution should be defended even when it got here into battle with different rights. In a rustic as liberal because the Netherlands, Bontenbal’s place has diverted some voters in direction of D66, whose chief is brazenly gay.
The youngest little one of the Tweede Kammer
Rob Retten was 31 when he grew to become the youngest group chief ever appointed to the Second Chamber and he may develop into, at 38, the youngest Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Two coalitions are doable: one with the right-wing events, the opposite with the left-wing events. Negotiations will start within the coming days.
The younger man has all the time cultivated a mode that goes in opposition to Dutch political canons. Where Geert Wilders hammers house his sovereignist anathemas and the place Frans Timmermans deploys his European stature tinged with verdant social democracy, Rob Jetten advances quietly, with out fanfare. Those near him communicate of a “political engineer”, educated in public administration, skilled within the mechanics of coalitions, architect of compromise. His opponents see it as managerial insipidness. “He talks like a file,” folks usually joke about him.
This claimed sobriety, which may have confined him to the margins of the electoral spectacle, paradoxically turns into his greatest asset in a marketing campaign marked by the fatigue of postures.
A sportsman who wished to be a restaurateur
Born in North Brabant, Rob Arnoldus Adrianus Jetten grew up in Uden in a household of Indo-European ancestry mixing Dutch and Indonesian heritage. As a toddler, he dreamed of turning into a prime athlete – a dream he pursued till becoming a member of the Dutch nationwide youth staff in operating. “I was and remain a passionate runner,” he confides. It was the Seven Hills Running Team that inspired him to maneuver from Uden to Nijmegen for his research. Another early ardour: catering, a household affair. “Ideally, I wanted to have my own restaurant, on a beach in a warm country,” remembers the person who moved into politics the day after a nationwide tragedy which affected him intently.
On the evening of the homicide of filmmaker Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004, a Turkish major faculty was burned down in retaliation within the city of his childhood. “The culprits turned out to be teammates from my football team. The rest of the world presented my village as a hotbed of far-right youth, he recalls. I teamed up with a few friends to prove everyone wrong, organizing various campaigns and speaking before the city council, he says on his Chamber of Deputies webpage. I had always been interested in politics, but this was the first time I understood that you have to take action if you disagree with something. »
A bitter observation on the immobility of the Rutte years
After studying public administration at Radboud University in Nijmegen, he began a career in the public body managing the Dutch railway network. In 2008, he became president of the Young Democrats, then municipal councilor in Nijmegen from 2010 to 2017 before his election to the Tweede Kammer in 2018.
“The Netherlands has remained immobile for 15 years,” he noticed bluntly in an interview with Dutch News on October 3. The Dutch authorities has not likely achieved something spectacular within the final 10 to fifteen years” – an remark tinged with self-criticism since he and D66 participated in a number of of the Rutte governments.
A minister on the coronary heart of the most important tasks
His ministerial portfolio was not the least: Climate and Energy, on the coronary heart of all of the tensions – between ecological emergency and social anxiousness, between technological ambition and budgetary constraints. He led the biggest local weather funding bundle ever undertaken within the Netherlands, launched the nationwide hydrogen infrastructure (the “H2-backbone”, the commercial spine of tomorrow in his phrases), and accelerated offshore wind energy whereas modernizing the electrical energy networks.
The criticism comes from two sides: local weather skeptics denounce extreme prices for households; NGOs criticize it for overly accommodating industrial exemptions. Rob Jetten embraces what he calls “high-speed pragmatism”. This ridgeline, which mixes technical realism and ecological voluntarism, right now buildings its complete marketing campaign.
Build ten cities together with one on the ocean
On housing, a serious irritant in Dutch society, D66 proposes a shock technique: the creation of ten new cities (!), the industrialization of building, densification alongside the railway traces, the drastic simplification of procedures. “Adding a street here and there won’t be enough,” he stated in the identical interview on Dutch News. But the place to construct 10 cities? At least one metropolis – Ustad – could be constructed by having access to the ocean and thus reclaiming extra land on the Markermeer between Amsterdam and Almere. However, it’s a Natura 2000 zone which is in precept unbuildable… Its opponents level out the extreme expenditure in tens of billions of euros of such a undertaking deemed unrealistic.
“It’s not just a pipe dream of 10 attractive and innovative cities. It’s also the whole question of how we build in the Netherlands: how we use the latest techniques and more prefabricated materials. How can we make this climatically and ecologically inclusive, with good public transport and schools?,” solutions Rob Jetten, who needs, with out additional delay, to move an emergency legislation to be able to construct 200,000 homes within the quick time period. »
He lives with an Argentinian hockey participant
On migration, Geert Wilders’ playground, the chief of the D66 refuses one-upmanship whereas promising firmness and effectivity. “The current asylum system is bankrupt,” he admits within the present News timeon October 16 on the NOS channel, earlier than criticizing the VVD’s coverage: “The people who can stay, the VVD does not allow them to learn Dutch or work. Then we complain that these people are on the sidelines. »
In an interview with Dutch News on October 1, he gives a more personal analysis – his companion is the Argentine hockey player Nicolás Keenan. “We want,” he says, “that new arrivals to this nation, whether or not they come to review, search asylum, work or for love, as in my very own case, know the place they stand, in order that they do their greatest to combine and take part in Dutch society. »
Open on the mixing of migrants
Faced with the federal government’s plan to increase the time restrict for acquiring Dutch nationality from 5 to 10 years, Rob Jetten has reservations. “All these new guidelines that make issues extra sophisticated and troublesome than they already are are going to trigger extra delays within the migration system, however in addition they do not make folks really feel that they’re welcome right here and that we would like them to be a part of our society. So I believe it should have the alternative impact. »
Rob Jetten’s breakthrough may be defined by a spread of things: distinction impact with the ambient polarization, reassurance of competence after his time in authorities, clear programmatic provide on structuring points, and undoubtedly put on and tear of historic figures. But it additionally comes from one thing deeper: the wager that political modernity, in a democracy uninterested in posturing, is firstly a matter of seriousness and technique.
D66 headquarters attacked by far-right activists
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
On the morning of the election, Rob Jetten summarized his proposal in entrance of the Goedemorgen Nederland cameras: “A vote for D66 is a vote for a very ambitious party, with housing, climate and education as main themes. We are also able to build bridges between different parties. »
This posture of “democratic facilitator” – neither on the left nor on the best, however on the operational heart – constitutes each its energy and its vulnerability. In a marketing campaign disrupted by vandalism and heated tempers (the headquarters of D66 in The Hague was the goal of far-right teams firstly of October), the chief of D66 maybe embodies the next political cycle: one the place engineering prevails over spin, the place appeasement is sought greater than the din of the tribunes.
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/pays-bas-le-centriste-rob-jetten-cree-la-surprise-face-a-l-extreme-droite-de-geert-wilders-29-10-2025-2602062_24.php