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Job Cohen quits - What the papers say

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Job Cohen has stepped down amid cries of both ‘pity’ and ‘good riddance’. What the papers say.

Elsevier in an editorial dismisses Cohen as a ‘bungling leader’ and wonders why ‘the parliamentary party is not allowed to choose its own leader from among the 29 MPs who are left’. Party chairman Hans Spekman has ‘limited their choice’ by decreeing that the party membership must be consulted over a suitable alternative, the paper writes. The outcome will have to ‘weigh heavily’ with the parliamentary party when it makes up its mind. Not a good move, and perhaps even an unconstitutional one Elsevier thinks, to treat the parliamentary party as ‘voting cattle’. Saddling the party with a leader until the next elections until ‘the real leader’ comes along is ‘illustrative of the party’s disarray’, says Elsevier.

Tested

The Volkskrant analyses where it all went wrong for Cohen. The man who was hailed as ‘a European hero’ by Time was ‘a brilliant administrator but not a good politician’, the paper writes. The paper suggests that former Amsterdam mayor Cohen was never really tested as a politician: in 2003, when then party leader Bos launched Cohen as the prime ministerial candidate days before the elections, all he had to do was watch from the side lines ‘how Bos sold the product Cohen’.

In 2010, when Bos left and Cohen took his place, he did have to go on the campaign trail and that is where his lack of experience showed. ‘No one had thought to coach this top civil servant. In an interview with NOVA in 2010 he stumbled and fumbled his way through an interview as no other politician had done before him. (…) As soon as a camera was pointed at him he stammered his way to the finish. Crammed with facts and figures Cohen lost his authenticity’, the paper writes. The VVD won and Cohen had to change roles again: ‘from street fighter to canny chess player’.

Mayor in wartime

Cohen never envisaged the possibility of a minority cabinet supported by the PVV, the paper writes. The opposition beckoned and his role changed again to one that Cohen later said ‘reflected a reality I wasn’t familiar with’. He had to oppose the cabinet’s plans but in the tradition of his party also take on the ‘mayor-in-wartime role’: conciliatory, opting for the greater good.’ It would have been nearer to the truth if he had said ‘I wasn’t suited to the part’, the Volkskrant concludes.

Trouw says in its analyses that when Cohen did manage to show where he stood the party immediately punished him. Trouw is referring to an interview with the paper last week in which Cohen said that ‘all things considered I think the SP comes closest to our principles’. It triggered an attack by those who already doubted his leadership qualities, the paper writes. When he came out of a hastily convened parliamentary party meeting ‘Cohen looked harassed and defeated. The parliamentary party was split. Half were against him. But a vote of no confidence? They did not have the guts because it would mean having to elect a new leader immediately.’

Civilised

Trouw has been looking at the debates of yore and concludes that Cohen would have made a fine leader ten or twenty years ago when the mores of those days included – ‘leisurely debates conducted in a civilised manner’- but not now when ‘to be quick off the mark and witty’ are prerequisites.

Nrc meanwhile warns that Cohen's leadership wasnt the party's only problem. A Maurice de Hond poll shows that 30%of the respondents think the party's vision is to blame. 40 % think the PvdA should move more to the left of the political spectrum, the paper writes.

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