Reactions
In the final debate between the leaders of the major parties (CDA, PvdA, SP, VVD, PVV, GL and CU) it was pointed out that the seated government lost 9 seats and the left wing parties (PdvA, SP, GL, PvdD) won 8 seats, which was interpreted as a signal from the voters that government policy should be more social. On the right, the PVV gained 9 seats, but other parties are silent about a possible coalition with the PVV. In the debate between party leaders – after the election was over – the question was raised if any of the leaders would want a coalition with the PVV. All kept quiet. When Wilders called this a "cordon sanitaire," VVD leader Rutte responded fiercely, saying that "there is no cordon sanitaire." Rutte believes the PVV is a "one-issue party," but also pointed out that he did not exclude the PVV as coalition partner.
When asked about the possibility of a CDA-PvdA-CU coalition, PvdA leader Bos responded that during the campaign the differences between CDA and PvdA have turned out to be rather big and that the big winner SP also deserves a place at the negotiating table. SP leader Marijnissen responded to this that the SP had never excluded CDA as a coalition partner, but that the CDA of the previous cabinet is not one with which the SP can enter a coalition. That, combined with the program of the CDA and the list of CDA MPs would constitute many 'road bumps' and 'bears on the road', and said he did not really want to start a coalition with this CDA program and this CDA MP list. Prime minister Balkenende responded that the CDA he wanted does not exist and that he has to enter talks with the CDA as it is now.
Marco Pastors' One NL was defeated by PVV even in his home town Rotterdam, where he had had a landslide victory at the 2002 municipal elections with his Leefbaar Rotterdam. Pastors, who himself had compared the present situation in the Netherlands with pre-war Germany, said that Wilders is too extreme for his taste, such as when speaking of a 'Tsunami of Islamisation'. He didn't want to follow him in this extremism. "I would have done myself injustice".
Read more about this topic: Dutch General Election, 2006
Famous quotes containing the word reactions:
“Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Cuteness in children is totally an adult perspective. The children themselves are unaware that the quality exists, let alone its desirability, until the reactions of grownups inform them.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“In this Journal, my pen is a delicate needle point, tracing out a graph of temperament so as to show its daily fluctuations: grave and gay, up and down, lamentation and revelry, self-love and self-disgust. You get here all my thoughts and opinions, always irresponsible and often contradictory or mutually exclusive, all my moods and vapours, all the varying reactions to environment of this jelly which is I.”
—W.N.P. Barbellion (1889–1919)