Politics: Netherlands: AP distorts and attempts to erase important win of Christian Democrats in the Netherlands
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In a h+ly-slanted news report Associated Press via International Herald Tribune distorts the outcome of today's Dutch election which was a precedent-setting continuance in power as the leading party and coalition convener, Christian Democratic Appeal. AP in an unsigned article, "Champagne for the socialists following Dutch elections" (Nov22,32k6) treated the material in the report in such an erasive way that it has to be mined to get the real story which is carefully hidden by editor, headliner and writer. It speaks of the main figure only obliquely:
Both Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose Christian Democrats again won the most seats, and Labor Party leader Wouter Bos were quick to congratulate a potential coalition partner.The story is actually about Dr Balkenende, whose party has consecutively won the largest number of votes in the last three elections in four years. Winning 44 seats in the 150-member Lower Chamber is an important placement for one of Europe's leading parties among the non-socialist confessional democrats and their allies in the European Peoples Union -- which bloc of parties across Europe group themselves in the largest contingent in the European Parliament. The Netherlands CDA, itself a union of Catholic and Protestant parties, is among the most sanely progressive and balanced in the world.
Europe > Netherlands
In the AP's desperate and dishonest gerrymandering of the story, it notes that at long last one statist socialist party (Socialist Party led by Jan Marijnissen, "a balding 53-year-old former welder, may have come in third") siphoned votes away from another statist socialist party (Labour Party, led by "city slicker" Wouter Bos who lost bigtime). Other than that, nothing changed much changed.Bos blamed a "polarization of political debate" that also led to the far right, anti-Islamic[ist] Freedom Party [VVD] winning 9 seats.Marijnissen represents a reaction to a reaction, a party of former Communists, "artists and intellectuals" -- while CDA continues steady on course, now with a new win and room to negotiate a bit more widely for new coalition partners.
In contrast to the news-manipulation in AP's story, the reader should click up the far superior reportage of Emma Thomasson for Reuters via Malaysia Star.
Still, if you want the real background on the difference between the statist socialist parties in the Netherlands, between Bos and Marijnissen, you have only to go back a few years to this report in Amsterdam Post (Feb15,2k3):
According to a police spokesman 35,000 to 40,000 people attended the peace demo against a war in Iraq.In short, SP is the pacifist-socialist extreme leftist statist party; Netherland's Labour Party is a non-pacifist-socialist statist party. So the problem may not be with the "city slicker" tag, but with Bos as the saner of the two socialist statist parties in the country. CDA is maligned by the ultraleft for being the party of big business, but this is carping by people who depend on business to create jobs and to pay for previous extravagant welfare expenses, which the Netherlands can no longer afford if wants to avoid the fate of Germany and France with their current slough of non-competitiveness and widespread unemployment.
The left wing elite was present, except for the Labour (PvdA) leader Wouter Bos. The Labour Party is not one of the participants. The party chairman Koole said yesterday that the demo is principally against any war. "There are moments when war is inevitable". He warned the Christian Democrats that the coalition talks would be over if Prime Minister Balkenende supports a war without an explicit UN Security Council mandate.
The Labour Party did not forbid its members of parliament to go, but the party as such does not approve of the demo. The opposition takes advantage of the absence of Bos. In the front line of the demo, SP leader Jan Marijnissen asks on the poster; "Have you seen this man?"
Fortunately, IHT abandoned the craziness of the AP report by soaking up later dispatches from Bloomberg and Reuters. A quite informative news article can now be found also on the International Herald Tribune site, "Dutch voters moving to the left" (Nov22,2k6) -- however, not to "the far-left" nor to "the Left" but somewhat left after the CDA's correction of the economy since it was first elected to office four years ago. Hence, it was again re-elected as the leading party.
-- Politicarp
Further Research:
Pre-vote story by Irish Examiner, quite wrong about Wouters' challenge to CDA
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