Former D66 leader Alexander Pechtold had nothing good to say about the attitude of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the cabinet formation on Tuesday evening in the Jinek talk show. Almost six months after the elections to the House of Representatives, there is still no new government in sight. Two coalition candidates, PvdA and GroenLinks, were banned this week after it seemed for a long time that a government with a combination of the two left-wing parties was a possibility. VVD member Mark Rutte turned out to be against, just like Wopke Hoekstra who, as party leader of an imploding CDA, puts on big pants during the formation negotiations. ‘Incomprehensible,’ Pechtold called the attitude of Rutte in particular:
You ask two parties with whom he has had good relationships in the past, worked with for ten years, you ask: jump through two hoops. Namely, we as D66 and VVD are going to write a kind of test of a coalition agreement together, you’ll have to judge that. They did that […] and then you say, I also want you to sit on each other’s laps. I think for another party to say to two, let’s start with some kind of merger, quite a requirement. They and their supporters organize a congress this weekend, those congresses give permission for that and then you say: great that you jumped through those two hoops, but the third hoop is closed. And you haven’t even talked about the content for a day, after five months.
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“I find Rutte’s attitude really incomprehensible today,” says @APechtold. #jinek pic.twitter.com/7zfC8DQswR
— Jinek (@Jinek_RTL) August 31, 2021
What Pechtold is also concerned about is that Rutte sets himself up in the formation as the sole ruler who can decide alone which parties are eligible for government participation. According to Pechtold, this may eventually lead to him deciding to rule over the far right:
What I’m afraid of is that he will be busy until he forms a minority romp on the right with CDA and VVD. And with the PVV, JA21, and SGP will get a majority.
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