EU PROFILE: THE NETHERLANDS:GEERT WILDERS, a former civil servant sporting a platinum-blond bouffant hairstyle, stands on the cusp of a significant electoral breakthrough in the Netherlands.
Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV), which he founded in 2004, is campaigning on a populist platform of law and order, cracking down on immigration and opposing Turkish accession to the EU. It is forecast to pick up four of the 25 Dutch seats in the European Parliament.
Wilders (45) is an outspoken opponent of the EU, telling journalists: “Every voter who wants to signal that the European Union is good for nothing in its current form can do so by voting for Geert Wilders.”
However he has made his name and captured worldwide public attention by criticising Islam, recently calling for the Koran to be banned and proposing a five-year prohibition on the founding of any new mosques and Islamic schools in the Netherlands.
“I don’t hate Muslims, I just hate Islam,” said Wilders shortly before he broadcast a short film called Fitna last year on the web that argued that the Islamic faith encourages terrorism and violence against women and gays.
A recent opinion poll published by Dutch pollster Maurice de Hond found the PVV is now the most popular party in the Netherlands. The poll predicted it would pick up 27 seats in the 160-seat Dutch parliament while the ruling CDA, the Christian Democratic Appeal, would be second at 26 seats and Labour (PVDA) third on 21 seats. The Democrats 66 would get 19, the Socialists (SP) would get 18 and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) 17 seats.
“Wilders will be successful in this European election and will probably capture up to 18 per cent of the vote,” says Dr Andrew Krouwel at the politics department of Free University Amsterdam.
“If a general election were held, this would enable him to certainly double and perhaps triple his representation in the national parliament, which currently stands at nine seats.”
Wilders is benefiting by being the only party that is strongly anti-European, campaigning on a small number of issues such as immigration and projecting an anti-establishment agenda, Krouwel adds.
In a six-month period in 2008, which coincided with the controversial Fitna movie, Wilders was mentioned in 40 per cent of front-page newspaper articles.
Wilders’s recent expulsion from Britain and a Dutch court’s decision to prosecute him for “incitement to hatred” has kept him and his party in the public eye in the lead-up to the elections.
However, he is unlikely to make any speeches at the European parliament’s plenary sessions in Strasbourg or Brussels as he has placed himself bottom of his party’s list.