Labour (PvdA) Party leader Wouter Bos would prefer to enter a coalition cabinet with the green-left GroenLinks as the third partner, but that party has no interest in joining the government.

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It is a public secret that CDA leader Balkenende wants to enter government with Labour and ChristenUnie. The leader of ChristenUnie, André Rouvoet said on Friday morning he was keen to enter negotiations about such a government.

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The Left stuck to its guns against deportations:

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The left-wing opposition parties clashed heavily with Verdonk because she refused to extend a temporary suspension on the deportations of long-term asylum seekers.

The PvdA had requested the extension in a motion during Tuesday night's emergency parliamentary debate.

That proposal was complimentary to a motion passed at the end of November calling for a general amnesty for asylum seekers who had lodged a request for asylum before April 2001 and were still living in the Netherlands.

When CDA Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said shortly after midnight that the cabinet would not carry out the motion, the PvdA lodged a motion of no confidence against Verdonk. That motion was backed by the left-wing majority.

The support of the small ChristenUnie was crucial in the vote. MP Tineke Huizinga said it was unacceptable that Verdonk did not even want to suspend the deportations for 24 hours.

It is possible that the cabinet — which has been in caretaker mode since the November elections — simply throws in the towel, a situation which has never occurred before.

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Minister Rita Verdonk — who had a motion of no confidence passed against her by MPs on Tuesday — will handover her immigration portfolio to Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Do you think a similar outcome could happen in Canada with List PR, or whatever it is they have in Holland, Wilf?

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I think you'd get what you want with the German MMP system. However, then you have to decide on the threshold. Taking the vote totals of the largest seven parties, the smallest is ChristenUnie with 4.25% of the seven-party vote. Sweden's 4% threshold would let them in, Germany's 5% would keep them out. Israel's 2% would let in Democrats' 66 with 2.06%.

With a 5% threshold, and (wrongly) assuming everyone voted the same even knowing that votes for small parties were a long-shot, the results would have been:

Socialists 28
GreenLeft 8
Labour 35
CDA 44
Liberals (right-wing) 25
"Freedom" 10

Left 71, right 79. Loss of splintered votes for ChristenUnie, Democrats' 66 and the Party for Animals costs the left their one-seat majority.

But then again, the left's one-seat majority is almost useless: so fragmented that no one is trying to put together a purely left coalition. So maybe a 5% threshold would have forced parties and voters to get together into workable-sided parties.

Threshold matters.

[ 16 December 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

And the Christian Democrats were out of the governing coalition from 1994 to 2002, and could be again if - as Wilf notes - the Dutch Left could get its act together.

More concerning is Stockholm's characterization of the Dutch health and education systems. For working age families, health insurance is mostly delivered through compulsory employer schemes but that doesn't make it any more private than Canada's EI program.

And so far as your claim that 40% of the Dutch send their children to private schools, many of these schools are fully state-funded and regulated, and not much different than Catholic schools in most Canadian provinces.

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As far as 500_Apples goes, it's nice to know he's still getting his(her?) daily talking points from the Fraser Institute.

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How is it a Fraser Institute talking point to say it's unreasonable to hold Holland to a higher standard than almost everywhere else?

That Canada has two tier health care is hardly a myth from a Fraser paper. Try and see a medical professional some time.

[ 16 December 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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but how many countries in the world don't have two tiered health care? Cuba and North Korea are the only ones I can think of on my own.

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500 Apples, this is what I was reacting to in your previous post:

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but how many countries in the world don't have two tiered health care? Cuba and North Korea are the only ones I can think of on my own.
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Since this is a canard repeatedly dredged up by right wing opponents of univeral health care, please excuse my skepticism about you coming up with it on your own.

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You're right, I didn't look up every single country. That's a thankless task best left to the graduate students being supervised by the researchers coming up with these stats. I take the statistic quoted in newspapers (I read both right and left-wing media, though no left-wing newspaper specifically as I'm not aware of any in this area). If you have evidence the statistic is wrong, I'll check it out and will keep an open mind.

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Coordinator of the Education-Work Contact Centre from 1984 to 1987

Staff member of the umbrella organization of regional apprenticeship bodies from 1987 to 1991

Project leader of a temporary scheme for apprenticeship pre-training for immigrants from 1991 to 1992

Project manager for emancipation and training for women within the vocational education system from 1992 to 1994

Personal adviser to T. Netelenbos, Secretary of State for Education, Culture and Science, from 1994 to August 1998

Political adviser to the leader of the Labour Party, A. Melkert, from August 1998 to December 2001

Member of the Dutch House of Representatives of the States-General since 11 December 2001

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Number two on Labour's list was Nebahat Albayrak, 38:

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Ms Albayrak was born in Sivas, a small town in Turkey on 10 April 1968. She has been living in Rotterdam since she was 2 years old. In 1987 she finished secondary school. Nebahat Albayrak has a degree in Law, specialisation on International Law and Law of the European Union. Besides her Law study she was a visiting student at the Law-faculty and l'Institut d'Etudes Francaises at Ankara. She was also a visiting student at the Institute d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. She has also taken some courses in English and Politics. Nebahat Albayrak began her professional career working as a policy-advisor for the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1993. She was elected Member of Parliament in May 1998.

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The three parties involved in talks on forming a new government have put March 7 as the latest deadline to complete the cabinet talks, prime minister and Christian Democrat leader Jan Pieter Balkenende said on Saturday evening. Balkenende also praised the Labour and ChristenUnie leaders Wouter Bos and André Rouvoet for their role in the talks so far.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Stockholm, you speak of two-tiered health care like a great evil that makes the netherlands different, but how many countries in the world don't have two tiered health care? Cuba and North Korea are the only ones I can think of on my own.

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Originally posted by Doug:

And even Cuba could be said to have two-tier considering the amout of medical tourism it offers.

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And Cuba has more doctors per capita than any other nation in this hemisphere, including the U.S. with its most privatized and most expensive health care system in the world delivering the worst infant mortality rates among 30 developed nations, from Sweden and the Netherlands to Canada and Cuba.

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- professor of sustainable business Jacqueline Cramer will be the new Minister for the Environment.

- Nijmegen mayor Guusje ter Horst will head Home Affairs. Nijmegen is known as Havana on the Waal among Right-wingers. The Socialist Party, the Green Party and Labour have a solid two-third majority in City Council, making Nijmegen the only major city in The Netherlands with a Left-wing government.

- former FNV trade union federation director Ella Vogelaar will become Minister for Integration and Neighbourhood Improvement.

Labour (PvdA) leader Wouter Bos will serve as Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, molecular geneticist, staunch atheist and opponent of intelligent design Ronald Plasterk will be Minister of Education, and MP Bert Koenders will become Minister for Development Cooperation.

Bos said on Monday evening he was proud and pleased with the posts assigned his party. Half of his team consists of women, as the PvdA party executive had asked.

Labour also gets six junior ministers. Four MPs from the PvdA will serve as state secretaries in the new government: deputy parliamentary party leader Sharon Dijksma (first elected at age 23 in 1994) at Education, Nebahat Albayrak (she was first elected at age 30 in 1998, originally from Turkey) at Justice, Jet Bussemaker (an MP for 9 years, she has a Ph. D. in political and socio-cultural sciences, with a thesis on individualization and the welfare state) at Public Health, and Frans Timmermans at European Affairs. Former MP Frank Heemskerk will become state secretary of Economic Affairs and Amsterdam alderman Ahmed Aboutaleb (of Moroccan origin) state secretary of Social Affairs.

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[ 15 February 2007: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

All that I have seen is a majority of Dutch are happy with the coalition but there remains a sizeable percentage not happy.

If this coalition tanks, the SP would be well positioned or visa versa.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
In the Netherlands people who voted for the Socialist Party are upset at NOT being included in the coalition government. In that country people vote for parties with the idea that they want those parties to have influence. Here in canada you get these nay-sayers in the NDP who hated making a deal with the Liberals over the budget and also hate making a deal with the Conservatives over the Accountability Act or about anything environmental. Its like they are only really happy when there is a majority government and the NDP never has to deal with anyone else and can just yell and scream a lot.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
the Christian Union that is ultra-conservative on social issues. What portfolios did it get?

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The Volkskrant reports that 55 GroenLinks party members got together in Utrecht recently to put their criticism of Halsema’s leadership on paper. The move was initiated by Paulus de Wilt who heads Groenlinks in Amsterdam.

He says the group of dissatisfied members has now grown to around a hundred. ‘GroenLinks was set up as an alternative to Labour. But we are no longer that, the Socialist Party is,’ he told the paper.

According to De Wilt GroenLinks is becoming an elite club for white ‘post-modern, cosmopolitan, hedonistic’ people.

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"The PvdA urged the Christian Democrat CDA, PvdA and GroenLinks to start talks. But GroenLinks rejected that proposal.”

Bos said he “completely understands” that both GroenLinks and the Socialist Party feel left out of the game. “But that is no reason to deny that it was their own decision to leave the talks.”

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"Working together, living together," was the slogan the leaders of the three parties presented.

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There were many Christian Democrats happy to move away from their neo-liberal partners in past administrations and to return to the traditional Dutch virtues of "solidarity, respect and social sustainability" that Balkenende called for in presenting the new programme.

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Ahmed Aboutaleb, from Morocco, is the State Secretary for Social Affairs in the new cabinet.

Nebahat Albayrak is Turkish and becomes the State Secretary for Justice.

They are the first Muslims to reach the heart of Dutch politics. The opposition right-wing Freedom Party has objected to the new centrist government being allowed to have members with dual nationality.

The row has led to a call for Princess Maxima, the wife of the Crown Prince, to give up her Argentine nationality.

The outgoing right-wing Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, said Princess Maxima, who is married to the heir to the Dutch throne, Prince Willem Alexander, should give up her Argentine passport.

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The Netherlands has more than 1 million residents with dual nationality, says Statistics Netherlands. Between 1992 and 1997, dual nationality was permitted. Immigrants are now required to give up their old nationality when naturalising. But the IND does list a number of exceptions, when the country of birth does not allow one to relinquish nationality for instance.

There is little discussion of dual nationality in traditional immigration countries like Canada, Israel and the US. Film star Arnold Schwarzenegger even serves as governor of California while holding both Austrian and American nationality.

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[ 22 February 2007: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]