Dutch prime minister and leader of the main conservative party Mark Rutte is credited for his country’s economic recovery following the financial crisis of 2008 but has seen his popularity dip as more voters opt for the nationalist party of Geert Wilders.
Wilders, the anti-immigration, anti-EU running candidate who is almost neck and neck with Rutte, stands to double his total number of seats in parliament in elections to take place on March 15. While the share for the two parties that form the government, including Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), is cut almost in half.
The political landscape is fragmenting after decades of stable consensus. Seven major parties will jostle for power and toil to find common ground on hot-button issues such as Muslim immigration, national identity, and elderly care that have polarized the European Union nation of 17 million people.
The emerging prospect that the biggest party may not command more than some 25 seats in the 150-strong parliament, with Wilders and a slew of smaller parties siphoning votes from the center, will complicate the building of a durable coalition.
Rutte’s pro-business VVD has adopted a tougher line against immigration hoping to stop Wilders’s euroskeptic populist movement from scooping up voters disenchanted by “establishment” parties.
Wilders led in the polls for most of 2016 with Rutte only edging ahead in recent days, though the parties remain in a virtual dead heat.
Rutte, 50, once led a minority government that excluded Wilders but relied on his support. Now he said he will never work with Wilders again because he is “against the freedoms and values” of Dutch society.
Rutte has led the economically liberal VVD since May 2006 and first became prime minister following the 2010 general election.
In 2012 Wilders triggered the collapse of Rutte’s minority government by refusing to back social spending cuts needed to meet European Union deficit spending rules.
The 2012 general elections, which followed generated the greatest number of seats ever for the VVD leading to a coalition with the Labor Party.
Rutte’s father was a merchant and his mother a secretary.
His first ambition was to go to a conservatory and become a concert pianist.
(Reuters)
