Geert Wilders vows to become Dutch PM by
compromising with other parties
Anti-Islam MP who won recent election says he will
‘continue to moderate’ his positions to gain power
Reuters in Amsterdam
Sat 25 Nov 2023 19.40 GMT
Veteran
Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders on Saturday vowed to be prime
minister of the Netherlands, after an election in which his party won the most
seats.
In a long
post on X, formerly Twitter, that expressed frustration at other parties for
their apparent unwillingness to cooperate with his Freedom party (PVV), Wilders
said he would “continue to moderate” his positions if necessary to gain power.
“Today,
tomorrow or the day after, the PVV will be part of government and I will be
prime minister of this beautiful country,” Wilders wrote.
Although
Wilders’ PVV, which stood on an anti-immigration platform, finished well ahead
of rivals in the 22 November vote, his party is forecast to take only 25% of
the seats in the Dutch parliament.
That means
he will have to cooperate with at least two more moderate parties in order to
form a government.
On Friday,
the conservative VVD party of caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte, which shares
many of Wilders’ views on immigration, said it would not participate in a
cabinet with him.
However,
the VVD’s new leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, did not rule out offering a
Wilders government outside support.
Pieter
Omtzigt, who leads the centrist reform NSC party and is also seen as a likely
partner in a Wilders government, has said cooperation will be difficult due to
extreme positions he has voiced that appear to violate Dutch constitutional
protections on freedom of religion.
Dutch
coalition talks usually take months, and positions about parties’ willingness
to work with each other can shift as time goes on.
If Wilders
is unable to form a government, more centrist combinations that exclude the PVV
are theoretically possible, while new elections would be a last resort.
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