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A month ago I shared the news about hilarious splits and mergers in small-party land. Today there’s an update.
MP Van Kooten, who was elected in 2017 for animal-rights PvdD, split off, joined angry-elderly 50Plus, split off together with party leader Krol to form the curiously-named PvdT (Partij voor de Toekomst; Party for the Future) which subsequently merged with FvD-dissident Group Otten, has now decided to split off once more and become an independent MP again. (You still follow?)
According to her, she was hardly informed about the PvdT/Group Otten merger before it occurred, and she also didn’t like Otten, the dissdent senator who split off from proto-fascist FvD. Otten is supposed to have said that, in the merger with the PvdT, his group brought in more legislators. Stritly speaking that is true: when he split off he was followed by two other senators and a bunch of provincial and local lawmakers.
Also, too, money. Group Otten brought in a lot more money than Krol and Van Kooten, due to Otten’s financially robust friends. This, in turn, allowed Otten to demand more influence in the new merger party.
All this sounds credible — which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.
In contrast, party leader Krol said that Van Kooten had given out plum jobs at the new PvdT to friends of her husband without notifying anyone, and her husband as secretary of the parliamentary fraction. The latter, while true, appears to have been done with Krol’s permission, although the latest news is that Van Kooten the husband never became a PvdT member.
Storm in a teapot, small-time arguments in the margins of Dutch politics. But this is how it works in small parties created mainly to stroke the egos of the people involved.
And in case you’re wondering: no, Dutch voters do not like this sort of behaviour, and tend not to vote for such parties. We’ll see what happens to PvdT when the new polls come out.
<— Hilarious small-party mergers | Party profiles — 50Plus and PvdT —>
This is the political blog of Peter-Paul Koch, mobile platform strategist, consultant, and trainer, in Amsterdam. It’s a hobby blog where he follows Dutch politics for the benefit of those twelve foreigners that are interested in such matters, as well as his Dutch readers.
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