Pieter Omtzigt Considers Forming His Own Party, Calls for Citizen-led Solutions to Social Problems during National Tour

Member of Parliament Pieter Omtzigt still does not know whether he will set up his own political party. The independent Member of Parliament has started a national tour through the Netherlands to call on interested parties to come up with concrete proposals to solve social problems. “I work step by step,” Omtzigt told NOS after the first meeting, tonight in the Koepeltheater in Leeuwarden.

After his departure from the CDA in June 2021, Omtzigt was regularly asked about his political future. Now, two years later, he is still undecided. In 2021 Omtzigt suffered a burnout and his return, sixteen weeks later, has sometimes been hard for him, he says now. “I want to do what I can do myself and I want to see how much support there is.”

According to Omtzigt, he will not return to his old party, the CDA. “That door is completely closed.”

In his speech to a sold-out audience, Omtzigt spoke of a “silent revolution”. He believes that citizens and all kinds of agencies involved in areas such as healthcare, housing, public administration and education should come up with solutions themselves. “Too much attention is paid to The Hague to solve the problems, but they are not capable of that,” he says. “The solutions must come from citizens all over the country, from the bottom up.”

Omtzigt left the CDA in 2021 and has been partyless ever since. Among other things, he became widely known for bringing the benefits affair to light, together with SP Member of Parliament Renske Leijten. In a book from 2021, he made proposals to restore trust between the government and citizens.

Omtzigt is very critical of the state of Dutch politics with a “government without public support, abstract models and administrators lost in technological politics without vision”. Omtzigt has a large following and some opinion polls predict that the ex-CDA member could win quite a few seats if there were now parliamentary elections.