Wilders ally overseeing first stage of Dutch coalition-building quits over fraud allegation

Wilders ally overseeing first stage of Dutch coalition-building quits over fraud allegation

A party ally of far-right Dutch election winner Geert Wilders has quit his role in the building of a new governing coalition over a fraud allegation

ByMIKE CORDER Associated Press

November 27, 2023, 3:58 AM

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right party PVV, or Party for Freedom, talks to the media after a meeting with speaker of the House Vera Bergkamp, two days after Wilders won the most votes in a general election, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)The Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A party ally of far-right Dutch election winner Geert Wilders on Monday quit his role in the building of a new governing coalition over fraud allegations, throwing the process of creating a new government into turmoil before it had begun.

Gom van Strien, a senator for Wilders' Party for Freedom, was appointed last week as a “scout” to discuss possible coalitions. He was set to meet Wilders and other party leaders on Monday, but those meetings were canceled.

“Not my dream start,” Wilders told reporters in the Dutch parliament. He said he was sounding out a possible replacement who is “more distanced from politics.”

Vera Bergkamp, president of the lower house of the Dutch parliament who formally appoints the official, called Van Strien's departure an “annoying to start the exploration phase.” She added that “it is now important that a new scout is quickly appointed who can start work immediately.”

Van Strien has denied wrongdoing after Dutch media reported that he was embroiled in a fraud case. But on Monday morning, he issued a statement saying that “both the unrest that has arisen about this and the preparation of a response to it” hampered his work seeking a coalition.

Van Strien is an experienced but largely unknown senator for Wilders' party, known by its Dutch acronym PVV.

He had been tasked with making an inventory of possible coalitions and reporting back to the lower house of the Dutch parliament by early December so that lawmakers could debate the issue on Dec. 6 before appointing another official to begin more concrete talks on forming a coalition.

Wilders' PVV was the shock winner of last week's Dutch election in a stunning shift to the far right in Dutch politics that sent shockwaves through Europe. Long an outsider largely shunned by mainstream parties, Wilders is now front and center of moves to form a new ruling coalition.

However, his hopes of quickly forming a right-of-center coalition were dealt a blow last week when Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, the new leader of the mainstream center-right VVD party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, said her party would not join a coalition led by the PVV.

Despite her rejection, Wilders has urged Yeşilgöz-Zegerius to join him in coalition talks with the leader of two new parties that made big gains in the election, the centrist New Social Contract and the Farmer Citizen Movement.

Van Strien’s resignation highlights one of the key issues Wilders is likely to face over the next weeks as its raft of new lawmakers take their seats in parliament — a lack of political experience in his party. The PVV has always been tightly centered around the figure of Wilders, who sets policy and is one of only a few publicly recognizable faces of the party.

Rem Korteweg, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, said the scandal swirling around Van Strien underscores a problem for Wilders and his party.

“He isn’t able to attract a stable cadre of people that are reliable. And this is going to be a problem for him moving forward,” Korteweg said at the European Policy Center think tank in Brussels.

He said the issue “is going to create structural problems for him to try to be a credible coalition partner, even if he’s the largest.”