Political Quirks - Pechtold
Posts in the Pechtold category.
Part of Politicians.
Yesterday featured the first major TV debate between five party leaders. Rutte and Wilders had withdrawn, so only Buma (CDA), Pechtold (D66), Klaver (GL), Asscher (PvdA), and Roemer (SP) participated.
The two main questions were whether one of the left-wing leaders would take a decisive lead over the others, and thus become Rutte’s main opponent in the elections; and whether Rutte and Wilders were right or wrong in abstaining from the debate.
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The Dutch elections are on 15th of March, and in the current international political climate they could take on an importance that goes well beyond our national parliament. Pundits and commentators might (ab)use the results to make predictions on the upcoming French and German elections (which will take place in April/May and September, respectively). So let’s take a look at the current situation. Last week we looked at the right; today we’ll look at the left.
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Yesterday the leaders of the eight largest parties debated on the economy. It was a tightly-led debate with a distinctly less weird format than usual, and it allowed all eight participants to shine a few times — or fail to do so, but that was their own fault.
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In an interview D66 leader Pechtold names the first concrete coalition preference: PvdA+VVD+D66+GL. The preference itself is old news, but the fact that he openly calls for this coalition is new.
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A few political items that happened to catch my eye:
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D66 leader Pechtold gives a brilliant example of how to discuss your coalition preferences without actually discussing your coalition preferences. This is the bit the Brits should practice before switching to a new electoral system.
In an interview Pechtold proposed that parties would state their coalition preferences before the elections. Thus voters would know what they’d get when they vote for a party.
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The new Politieke Barometer
poll has landed, and I’ve added it to the polls page.
The PvdA won seven seats, and that’s really a lot for just one week.
Even in my dampened-down average the PvdA is now four seats larger than the CDA.
It’s clear that the appointment of Cohen has been an excellent move.
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I’ve been neglecting the recent polls a bit. Each week,
Peil.nl (Maurice de Hond)
and the Politieke Barometer
publish their ongoing general election polls (on Sunday and Thursday, respectively),
and this are obviously prime data sources for any Dutch political blog.
Reason I’ve been neglecting them is that I was working on a
polls and coalition overview, which is now finally
finished. In the future I can give a brief overview of every new poll and refer you
to this page for the details, as well as the poll trends.
The page also contains a coalition creation game, where you can try your
hand at forming a stable majority coalition, and find out why it takes so bloody long.
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On Wednesday Dutch voted for their local councils, and the result is interesting. SP leader Kant resigns, Wilders’s PVV the largest party in one city, PvdA and CDA lose, D66 wins.
Before we continue, one housekeeping note: I will be away for the weekend, and there will be no updates to this blog. Publication will resume on Monday.
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The Dutch nine-to-twelve-party system is sometimes hard to understand for foreigners;
especially when the small parties come into play. Therefore I’m running a mini-series
that treats all eleven parties that stand a decent chance of getting seats in the upcoming elections.
We’ll go from largest to smallest.
Today we’ll continue with D66.
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Yesterday the leaders of CDA, PvdA, VVD, PVV, SP, and D66 debated each other on
TV, and continued on the Internet. I watched both so you don’t have to.
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Some small fry that might be of interest to political observers:
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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.
If you like this blog, why not donate a little bit of money to help me pay my bills?
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