Not Gwendolyn Rutten, but Paul Van Tigchelt is the surprising new Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Justice and the North Sea. An unexpected move by the Open Vld leadership, but anything but an illogical one. Although it is also one with far-reaching consequences within the party.
“I’m not asking for a hundred days, I’m not asking for ten days, I’m starting now. We don’t have the luxury of wasting time.” Continuity and an overdose of expertise, at the press conference about his appointments, Paul Van Tigchelt immediately explains why Open Vld chose him. For the past three years, Van Tigchelt has been deputy chief of staff for Justice and Security in the cabinet of Vincent Van Quickenborne, the minister who resigned on Friday after last Monday’s terrorist attack.
Politically, the baker’s son from the Kempen was not ready for his test piece. At the beginning of this century, Van Tigchelt was deputy chief of staff and spokesperson for then Minister of the Interior Patrick Dewael (Open Vld) for five years.
But above all, Van Tigchelt has a track record as a magistrate that is impressive. For many years he was Antwerp’s deputy attorney general, spokesperson for the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office and the reference magistrate for drug offenses. The war on drugs in Antwerp was initiated by him, long before Bart De Wever (N-VA) made it a political point of contention.
He knows the magistracy inside and out, but also the security services. Van Tigchelt had only just been appointed as the new head of the Coordination Body for the Threat Analysis OCAD, when the attacks in Brussels and Zaventem took place on March 22, 2016. He gave the service a face, expanded its range of tasks and is the basis of the so-called OCAD lists, the list of extremists and terrorists in our country that should be monitored as a priority.
Push into Antwerp
To put it simply: Paul Van Tigchelt is a household name within the judiciary. No one can argue that he is not the right man in the right place.
What is a question mark: how far do his political ambitions extend? Although he has worked in cabinets before, he has in the past resolutely dismissed any suggestion of a career on the political front. It is clear to the party management: it is absolutely the intention that Van Tigchelt will be featured prominently in the elections of June next year.
This news may cause some commotion in the Antwerp branch of Open Vld. After all, Van Tigchelt comes from the Antwerp constituency, and that is precisely a place where the Flemish liberals already have some leaders left. Antwerp is also the province of brand new chairman Tom Ongena, Flemish minister Bart Somers and Flemish faction leader Willem-Frederik Schiltz.
Knowing that Open Vld only managed to capture three seats for the Flemish Parliament in Antwerp in 2019 and barely two in the Chamber, and that the lists at the top must be completed alternately m/f/m or f/m/f, the Antwerp list formation committee for a very tedious task.
Antwerp is now a large constituency, but given the current disastrous polls it is virtually impossible that the Liberals will be able to retain their seats there. The top places on the list were therefore very expensive anyway, and an extra dog in the bowling game could do without ambitious Antwerp Open VLD souls like a toothache – or at least the men among them.
Exit Rutten
Van Tigchelt’s appointment has certainly caused a stir within the party. Immediately after the news leaked that the former magistrate would succeed Vincent Van Quickenborne, Gwendolyn Rutten posted an open letter on her Facebook page announcing her retirement from national politics.
Rutten says he will immediately say goodbye to national politics, and will therefore also leave the Flemish Parliament. Van Tigchelt’s appointment is the direct reason for this. “In recent days it has become clear that the current party leadership no longer sees a significant role for me,” she writes. “So be it, that is the fate of every politician. The disrespectful way in which that happened did contribute to my decision.” Rutten was the most quoted, and according to many, the most obvious name to succeed Van Quickenborne.
It is not the first time that the Flemish Brabant has missed out on a ministerial post. In 2011, Rutten had to swallow a bitter pill when Alexander De Croo – against whom she lost the battle for the party chairmanship two years earlier – against all expectations, appointed her colleague Maggie De Block to the Di Rupo government. To illustrate how much pain that hurt: for Christmas, Rutten gave De Croo the DVDs of the political series The West Wing gift. “There you see politics as it should be,” she said.
Rutten became party chairman in 2012, after De Croo himself took the place of – yes – Vincent Van Quickenborne, who then opted for the mayor of Kortijk. Rutten resigned as chairman in 2020, the year in which De Croo became prime minister of a government she helped prepare. From an interview at the end of that year, which she herself described as particularly difficult. “Maybe I should have it this year House of Cards to give.”
