Cabinet in muddy waters as provincial voters turn
out for farmers and left alliance
ElectionPolitics March 15, 2023 - By Gordon
Darroch Caroline van der Plas reacts to the exit poll showing the BBB in front.
Photo: ANP/Sem van der Wal The farmers’ party
BBB is set to be the big winner in provincial
elections in the Netherlands, dealing a blow to the government’s plans to
reduce nitrogen pollution by buying out cattle farmers. Less than four years
after it was founded, Caroline van der Plas’s party is set to be the largest
group in the senate, with 15 of the 75 seats, based on a 19% share of the vote.
Provincial assembly members will choose the new senate in May. ‘The Netherlands
has clearly shown that we’ve had enough of these policies,’ Van der Plas told broadcaster
NOS. ‘It’s not just about nitrogen, it’s about citizens who are unseen and
unheard, who aren’t being taken seriously, whose problems aren’t being tackled.
‘The train in The Hague keeps rolling on. We’re going to stop the train.’ Two
left-wing parties, Labour (PvdA) and GroenLinks, who are forming an alliance in
the senate, are also on course to win 15 seats, according to an exit poll for
national broadcaster NOS. That would allow the coalition parties, who are
projected to win 24 seats between them, to bypass the BBB, as the GroenLinks
and PvdA alliance would supply enough votes for a majority. The two parties
have already said they will drive a hard bargain on climate change, with
GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver warning last week that he would block the
cabinet’s green energy plans unless it accelerated the transition to renewable
energy and the abolished fossil fuel subsidies. ‘Right or left?’ Klaver told a
campaign rally for both parties: ‘Our ambition was to be the biggest faction in
the upper house, the first left-wing party in 20 years, and that is still
possible. Will the cabinet go right or left?’ It would also put the cabinet on
a collision course with the provincial governments, where the BBB will seek to
build coalitions. The cabinet will need the consent of provincial governments
to carry out its plan to buy out high polluting farms and businesses that
border nature conservation zones. Christianne van der Wal, the minister in
charge of nitrogen reduction policy, warned there could be no turning back on
the buyout plan, which is a response to a judgment by the Council of State
based on a binding European conservation agreement. ‘It’s a very complicated
portfolio that will have a very big impact on a huge number of people, but at
the same time we have no choice,’ she said. Exit polls in three provinces
projected that the BBB would be the largest party in Noord-Holland,
Noord-Brabant and Overijssel. In the eastern province of Overijssel it scored
31% of the vote in the poll, which would be enough to win 17 of the 47 seats
seats. No other party was projected to win more than four. Coalition losses All
four coalition partners are projected to lose seats in the senate. Rutte’s
right-wing liberal VVD is set to remain the largest of the coalition quartet,
with 10 senators, while D66 and the ChristenUnie lose one each. Rutte
acknowledged that the poll did not project ‘the gains we wanted’. He
congratulated van der Plas on her party’s success, but added: ‘We are prepared
to take responsibility in the provinces.’ The major losers are the Christian
Democrats (CDA), whose traditionally loyal rural voters appear to have defected
en masse to the BBB. The poll predicts it would lose four of its nine seats in
the upper house. Hoekstra: ‘Bitter pill’ CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra described
the projected outcome as an ‘extraordinarily bitter pill’ and ‘a landslide that
we haven’t seen for years.’ D66 leader Sigrid Kaag said the BBB had ‘managed to
pull off a phenomenal result’ and said the election had been a ‘festival of
democracy’. Turnout was the highest for provincial elections in 30 years at
61%, with several polling stations reportedly running out of ballot papers.
Kaag said she was satisfied with her party’s performance, even though D66 is
projected to lose one of its seven senate seats. ‘We stand for our ideals and
we are committed to achieving our progressive agenda,’ she said. Two new
parties are predicted to enter the senate: the hard-right JA21, who are set to
win three seats, and pro-European group Volt, who could pick up two. The animal
rights party PvdD also gained votes and could end up with five senators. Forum
slump Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam PVV party, the Socialists (SP) and the
ultra-orthodox SGP are all expected to make small losses. The big winners of
the last provincial elections, Thierry Baudet’s right-wing nationalist Forum
voor Democratie, were the biggest losers this time. Their share of the national
vote slumped from 14% to 3% after four years dominated by infighting, with 11
of their 12 senators defecting from the party. This time Forum is projected to
take just two senate seats. Baudet told cheering supporters his party was
focused on a ‘long-term project’.
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