THE HAGUE - NSC parliamentarians Rosanne Hertzberger and Femke Zeedijk have resigned from the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament. Interim party leader Nicolien van Vroonhoven announced their resignation after the coalition party’s weekly meeting, saying they cited unrest in the Cabinet last week following riots in Amsterdam.
On Friday, NSC State Secretary Nora Achahbar resigned over the same issue. During discussions about the anti-Semitism and attacks on Israeli football supporters during the Amsterdam riots, Cabinet members made statements that she considered racist. Achahbar, who has Moroccan roots, spoke out against these remarks during the meeting. Other NSC Cabinet members were considering following her example, but in the end, a collapse was averted.
Femke Zeedijk told NOS in an explanation that she has been annoyed for months about how things are going in national politics. “The debate in The Hague does not sufficiently address solutions.” According to the NSC member, Achabar’s departure created the image that “someone with that background is not welcome.” She could not abide by that.
Zeedijk also said that she missed self-reflection from Prime Minister Dick Schoof and the rest of the Cabinet on how they handled the situation in Amsterdam, with Schoof only insisting that there is no racism in the Cabinet. “For me, discrimination has been given a face with this,” she said, but wouldn’t tell the broadcaster whose face she meant.
Hertzberger told ANP that Achahbar’s departure after having to address racism in the Cabinet meetings “makes it clear to me that things are seriously getting out of hand in this Cabinet.” She said she has been warning her party for some time about the risks associated with working with the far-right PVV, though the collaboration seemed “unavoidable” given the election results in November, in which the populist party became the largest in parliament.
Things have only “become worse” in recent months, Hertzberger said. “Unfortunately, we have to conclude that more parties have let go of the brakes. Completely inappropriate statements are being made, both in front of and behind the scenes of this government.” She added that the government seems to have let go of “basic standards of decency.”
Though not in the Cabinet, coalition party leaders Geert Wilders (PVV) and Caroline van der Plas (BBB) both vocally and repeatedly blamed the riots in Amsterdam following a match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv on Moroccans and Muslims, with Van der Plas also throwing “North Africans” in there. Prime Minister Schoof, who called the riots an “integration problem,” also said that he found it important to keep mentioning that the perpetrators of the riots were “people with a migration background who have turned their back to Dutch society.”
During the parliamentary debate on the riots, Schoof defended his statements about an integration problem by saying he wasn’t talking about all immigrants, only the group of young people who have “turned away from society,” he said. “To others, I say: no, that is not about you, I stand with the good who suffer under the bad.” Being “one of the good ones” is a microaggression often faced by people in a minority population group.
The two resigning parliamentarians returned their seat to the NSC, meaning the coalition will not lose any seats in the Tweede Kamer. But it is another big blow for the NSC.
Interim NSC leader Van Vroonhoven called it a “sad day,” speaking to Parool “We have let them go with sadness,” she said, stressing that the rest of the party will continue. “Full steam ahead. Because we still have a lot of things to achieve. We have a role to play in this coalition. It hurts us a lot, it affects us as a whole team, but we still have so many thighs, ideas, thoughts. We are going to do that together.”
