Less than 24 hours after Thierry Baudet, under considerable pressure from the party, decided to renounce the leadership for the House of Representatives elections in March 2021, the Forum for Democracy has been turned upside down. The political future of the party and its principal member is uncertain.
The news followed quickly. Baudet left the party board and made his position available on the list, followed by his confidant and also candidate member of parliament Freek Jansen.
Theo Hiddema no longer had “job satisfaction” and immediately left the House of Representatives. He wasn’t even at his own farewell ceremony. Paul Cliteur, member of the Senate and intellectual mentor of Baudet, lacked motivation after all this news. “My fate is tied to his,” said Cliteur of Baudet.
Riots are not strange to Baudet. Since he came to the House of Representatives together with Hiddema in 2017, he has weathered many a storm: arguments with co-founder Henk Otten, statements about race and intelligence from a fellow party member, whether or not to speak ill of Dutch people with a Moroccan background in one tweet.
Storm did not lie down this time
These storms often subsided, but in the latter case the criticism grew, also within the party.
Het Parool revealed last weekend that members of the youth division JFVD hold anti-Semitic, far-right and homophobic ideas. The whistleblowers who denounced this were eventually dealt with themselves. JFVD chairman Jansen did not act; he also regularly flirts with extremist ideas.
According to the book My opinions are facts from journalists Mischa Cohen and Harm Ede Botje, Jansen would have arranged an appointment with the extreme right-wing Jared Taylor and Fausto Lanser, the founder of the extreme right-wing and racist society Erkenbrand.
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Thierry Baudet and Freek Jansen last September in the House of Representatives. (Photo: ANP)
Debating ‘beneath my dignity’
Baudet has never made it a secret that he does not like the diligent Chamber work – with long debates, private laws and amendments. “It is beneath my dignity to set off pointless arguments here”, he said in September 2018. According to Baudet, he is not listened to anyway, he finds debates “fake and unreal”.
Baudet often lets important parliamentary debates go, he leaves prematurely or lets Wybren van Haga, former VVD member and now candidate member of parliament for FVD, speak. As a parliamentarian he did write four books.
Baudet hopes for a back door
Baudet hopes that after March 2021 he can also go to Parliament at FVD, but then as a list pusher. In that case you get a symbolic place at the bottom of the election list, in the hope of attracting extra votes for the party.
The electoral list is leading, so you will not just enter the Chamber, unless you get enough preferential votes. This threshold is set at a quarter of the quota (the number of votes required for one seat). In 2017, that was 17,500 votes, Baudet received 125,000 votes.
Nanninga: ‘Baudet flickers entire party in the fireplace’
But the question is whether Baudet will allow that back door within FVD. Annabel Nanninga, as a member of parliament in North Holland, senator and councilor in Amsterdam, prominent party member, has had it all with Baudet, who, according to her, “lights the whole party in the fireplace”.
She demands from the party board that he no longer remains associated with FVD in any way. She realizes a step with which she can be expelled. “That would mean that within (J) FVD it is better to propagate Nazi ideas than to speak out against it,” she let the board know.
If the board, which according to Nanninga is effectively still headed by Baudet, still listens to her, Baudet must look for another way that should lead to the House of Representatives. “I am not done with politics,” said Baudet on Tuesday at the end of a short statement for the FVD office in Amsterdam.
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