THE HAGUE-Thirty-seven political parties will be participating in the Netherlands' parliamentary election in March – a post-war record, the Electoral Council announced on Friday.
A total of 41 parties submitted a list of candidates, but four of them did not meet all the requirements, press bureau ANP reports.
The list numbers were also allocated by the Electoral Council. Parties that already earned seats in the Second Chamber of Parliament four years ago got the first 13, while a lottery determined the rest.
In 2017 there had been 28 parties. That was equal to the old post-war record set in 1971 and matched in 1981.
The absolute all-time record remains 53 parties for the 1922 election.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/37-parties-in-dutch-election
A complete different approach: since 10-10-10 there are about 210,000 voters that are not able to vote for the Second Chamber. But nevertheless this organ is, as it is most convenient for them, one moment the parliament for the Kingdom The Netherlands, and one minute later the parliament for the country The Netherlands. And all budgets for the countries Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten pass first this same organ.
You could therefore say that the equivalent of 3 members of parliament were put aside.
Of course albeit that the elections quota on these islands is much lower (about 1500, 3300 and 5500 votes) compared to the 70000 in the Netherlands.
And then there was also the Ubuntu Connected Front, a new party that wants attention. On their website only the leader Regillio Vaarnold (LinkedIn: ‘Chairman of the Board and CEO’) is mentioned, as so is it in the press. But only by an article in BES-reporter we know that there are also Statian candidates on their list. But unfortunately they still have a lot to learn about marketing, ’cause even on Statia they are scarcely known.
First about the strange name Ubuntu. Those with some IT knowledge think immediately to Ubuntu, an Open Source Operating System, linked to Linux. But the people of this party have a different translation. It should mean according to them: ‘I am, because we are’. Although this phrase is linguistically not correct, it does not mean something extraordinary or revolutionary. In fact, it is meaningless! To me, at first, it brought remembrance to the 16th century French philosopher René Descartes, who wrote: ‘Cogito ergo sum’ or ‘I think, so I am’. Without going into detail about the meaning of this, you could imagine that this party did not think that far.
Then about ‘Kieskringen’ , which means regions in which this party can be elected. The protocol of the Kiesraad (see web) states that they did not have enough declarations of support in many regions (and large cities). Only in about half of the 20 regions (including nr. 20 – Bonaire, Statia, Saba) there were enough support declarations to participate in the elections. For every Kieskring in which a party wants to participate only 30 support declarations are needed, and for the BES-region only 10! It says something if not all regions had enough supporters! We are talking about a few hunderd supporters that could not be found! You need a lot more in the elections!
There are 3 Statian candidates on this list, but on ineligible rank numbers, as the election quota, that is the number of votes necessary for one membership of the House of Parliament, is 70.000 votes. Even in the number 20 elections region in 2017 there were only 3,452 votes (including not valid and blank votes).
You could say that the Statian candidates are on the list only to collect votes for the number one on the list.
But why should you consider this? Although the leader, Regillio Vaarnold, has his heart in the right place, and many things he has said and done are pretty okay, the program of the party is quite racially backgrounded, which is not good for results in elections, and that goes in general for all colors. Taking a hitchhike on the Black Lives Matter movement is a kind of body snatching that is not done! The rest of this program is sometimes pretty vague: ‘Met Connected benadrukken wij onze verbinding met het universum en de (circulaire)synergie van de verbinding met de specifieke geschiedenissen van alle burgergemeenschappen in Nederland’. Yep, that’s what the program said.
To compare something: in 2017 Koos Sneek tried to get votes also, but as some investigators could have predicted, only 385 people voted for him. Although these votes were almost half of the votes on the BES-islands for the CDA party, 385 votes is a big difference to 70,000 votes! The 115,000 euros plus, are possibly teasing, but you need more support for that goal.
And now the ever estranged party Bij1 of the woman who has done the most to undo black emancipation by angering everybody with super annoying and unrealistic proposals, has an election stunt: let all islands decide for themselves how much the slavery reparations payments must be. Why is this election propaganda and why is this despicable?
Slavery reparations is not bad and a must-do thing, but without the accompanying awareness in the societies that organized slavery it would defeat the purpose. Think about the intrinsic ideology in these countries that has made modern slavery still possible and tangible. Not everything is about the money! We value other people’s life more.
This Dutch elections makes me think about the movie ‘Brewsters Millions’ of Richard Pryor in which he participated in an election under the name ‘None of the Above’. In this movie corruption and bribery are interconnected with elections.
Of course the Dutch elections aren’t.
Pechtold, the former leader of D66 received an apartment as a gift. Of course this was no bribe, it was only worth 135.000 euros.
And all members of parliament who received free football tickets, all kinds of free sport tickets, free breakfasts, lunches and diners, free hotel accommodations, free holidays, free expensive whiskey bottles, wine bottles, beer, liquors, trips, clothing, vegetables, balloon trips, plane trips, books, electronics, excessive flowers, vouchers, theater tickets, ballet tickets, excursion tickets, opera tickets, museum tickets, music festival tickets, trees (!), children’s books, children’s toys, etc. in heights of many thousands of euros – every year (!) – cannot be indicted for bribery. This is common business in Den Haag.
None of the above becomes more and more acceptable.
At feestpartij.nl you can read that this one-man-party of johan vlemmix, wants to add a lotery to every election, so you can win something.
The party Niet Stemmers (non-voters) is a product of lawyer Peter Plasman, who always defended the ‘wrong’ people.
Kindpartij is a cooperation of people with hard feelings towards the dutch child care organizations.
Just a few strange ideas…
In fact, if so many in the Netherlands see this elections as a joke, who are we to think differently?
If you have a look at the website of the Kiesraad, you will see that many of these so-called parties are organized just for this events and are sometimes a joke: Piratenpartij, Niet Stemmers, GeenPeil, Atheïstisch Seculiere Partij, Code Oranje, Partij voor de Bomen, Partij voor de mens en alle overige aardbewoners, U-Buntu Connected Front, De Feestpartij, Partij Zonder Naam, Kindpartij, Evert!, and many other crazy names.
In the case there are enough voters for a strange idea, 115.000 euros plus per year is the reward.